Deputy PM Monitors 'No Burn, Wallet' Project, Enlists Private Sector to Buy Agricultural Waste

Energy Minister Eknat Prompan has unveiled a major energy restructuring plan, under which the government will reserve 10,000 megawatts of rooftop solar generating capacity specifically for the public, set at roughly 5 kilowatts per household, to spread the right across households nationwide. Under the new approach, the state will buy back surplus power and apply it as a discount on the same billing cycle's electricity bill. A 5-kilowatt system can generate about 600 to 700 units per month, worth roughly 2,000 baht or more, and the state will provide a subsidy of 50,000 baht, with the income from the generated power used to pay it off. The equipment is expected to be fully paid off in about 7 to 10 years. On cutting permitting steps, coordination will be handled solely through the distribution utilities, with a target of about 1 week for inspection and acceptance in self-consumption installations, and no more than 1 month in cases of selling power back. For the new Power Development Plan, or PDP, three goals are set: cleanest, most stable, and fairest. It targets raising the share of clean energy from the current level of just over 20% to close to 50% within 10 years, and no less than 65% in the long term, while reducing reliance on spot-market LNG in favor of long-term contracts, and opening the door to future technologies including hydrogen, geothermal, solid oxide fuel cells, and small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. Meanwhile, the public electricity cost that has been embedded in the power tariff structure for 30 to 40 years amounts to a burden of about 18 billion baht per year. The government has removed this burden from the structure and has already implemented a measure capping the first 200 units of household electricity at 3 baht per unit.

Allied Biofuels has confirmed full stakeholder confidence in reaching Final Investment Decision in Q1 2027 for its US$6.1 billion Presidential Decree-backed Sustainable Aviation Fuel and e-SAF project in Uzbekistan, following a major Front-End Engineering Design meeting at Sinopec's office in Ningbo, China. The meeting brought together Allied Biofuels with Sinopec Engineering Group Co., Ltd. of China, Topsoe A/S of Denmark, Sasol South Africa Limited and Plug Power of the United States, the principal international engineering and technology providers supporting the project. Sinopec Engineering Group is delivering FEED, systems integration, detailed engineering and open-book cost development, with the project structured for rollover to EPC. Topsoe and Sasol are providing the core technology license, engineering design package and technical services for the e-SAF production pathway, combining Topsoe's SynCOR technology with Sasol's Fischer-Tropsch technology, while Plug Power, through Plug Power Europe SAS, is supporting the project with up to 2.4 GW of GenEco PEM electrolyzer systems plus the Basic Engineering Design Package and associated engineering services. Alfred Benedict, Managing Director of Allied Biofuels, said the Ningbo meeting confirms the strength of the project and the confidence shared by every stakeholder, with responsibilities clear, key technology interfaces aligned and the execution programme established. Allied Biofuels is developing Central Asia's first world-scale integrated biorefinery in Uzbekistan, purpose-engineered for industrial-scale SAF and e-SAF production.