In conventional practice, with the load forecast in place, EGAT develops a draft PDP that is then reviewed by government committees and approved by the cabinet. In developing the PDP 2010, EGAT uses commercial software that includes an algorithm that selects among the candidate supply options listed in the bullet points below. These options are generally new plants in “green‐field” sites (sites that have never had a power plant before) or new plants added to existing “brown‐field” sites (sites that already have an existing power plant) that have the ability to expand:
- natural gas combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT), 800 MW per plant
- nuclear, 1000 MW per plant
- coal, 800 MW per plant
In EGAT’s PDP these options are augmented by a very limited amount (0.3% of total GWh) of demand side management (DSM) and some renewable energy (VSPP and SPPs). The plan also includes a disquieting amount of imports of hydropower and polluting lignite‐fired electricity from neighboring countries. Currently planned imports of electricity from hydropower and lignite power plants in Laos and Cambodia are not subject to Thai environmental regulations and public review, but this does not make the impacts any less real. The silence is more reflective of the restricted ability to protest, or limited awareness by communities that will be affected in the future. In the case of coal and some hydropower projects, downstream and downwind impacts will even hurt Thailand. But because the project is across an international border (though some investors of these projects may be Thai companies or even EGAT’s subsidiaries), Thais’ opportunities for redress are also limited.
In the official PDP, electricity import projects receive special treatment. They are treated as “policy inputs” and are not required to compete with other options. The rest of the PDP is then built around these assumed bilateral coal and hydropower import projects, selecting coal, gas or nuclear based on the computer program’s selection criteria.
These resource options, we believe, reflect an overly restrictive vision of options for the power sector. Below we present a discussion of an expanded field of resource options.