• 
• 
• 

Speaking at an international conference on alternative energy held by The Nation, Wannarat said he believed Thailand would be better off upon accomplishing the 15-year renewable-energy development plan.First, the country will gain from a massive substitution of fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, equivalent to consumption of 19,799 kilotonnes of oil equivalent (koe).

This can be broken down into 2,290koe of power generation, 7,433koe of heat and 10,076koe of biofuel, hydrogen and compressed natural gas.

Second, Thailand will enjoy a saving of Bt460 billion annually in terms of foreign exchange paid on imports by 2022.

Other economic benefits include new investment projects in the energy sector worth up to Bt382 billion, the creation of 40,000 jobs, earnings of Bt14 billion from carbon-credit trading, and Bt100 billion in savings due to the postponement of 3,800 megawatts of new fossil-fuel power projects.

Third, the country will gain from social benefits resulting from the long-range renewable-energy development plan, as there will be less migration into big cities due to the creation of more jobs in rural areas.

In addition, farmers will get extra income from renewable-energy schemes, while there will be better upcountry land utilisation.

Fourth, Wannarat said, renewable energy will lead to lower emissions and mitigate global warming.

In the transport sector, the minister said the government was promoting natural gas for vehicles (NGV) as well as E85, which is a blend of biofuel and petrol.

For NGV, the daily consumption is projected to rise from the current 3,165 tonnes per day to more than 12,000 tonnes by the year 2012.

By 2022, NGV is projected to substitute 20 per cent of fossil-fuel consumption.

For E85, as well as other biofuel mixtures such as E10 and E20, production of ethanol-based fuels is projected to rise to 9 million tonnes per day, an equivalent of 2,447koe by 2022.

Meanwhile, Cho-Oon Khong, chief political strategist at Shell International, said the global economy should record average annual growth of 3.5 per cent over the next four or five decades.

Citing Shell's energy scenario covering 2006-2056, he said the world needed to be significantly more energy-efficient in order to mitigate global warming.

More diverse sources of energy such as wind, solar and nuclear should be adopted, especially in developed economies.

Secondly, he said, the world needed stopgap measures to deal with, for example, a rise in the consumption of coal, which is cheaper than other fossil fuels.

Coal is not a clean energy source, so new technology such as carbon-dioxide capture and storage would be needed to cope with such a trend, he added.