Bio-diesel to Generate PNG's Power-Still a Hard Nut to Crack
Patrick Nomos | 28/1/2021
(Photo Credit: Coconut Plantation by Allyson Fernando from Pexels)
Per capita, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of the world's least-electrified countries, with just 13 per cent of its eight million citizens having access to electric power, most of them living in urban centres. Although upgrading electricity supply has been identified as one of PNG's key goals in its Development Strategic Plan, the fact that 80 per cent of PNG's population lives in rural areas looms as a massive issue in delivering electric power to remote population centres.
Despite the PNG Government's ambitious electrification goals through the PNG Electrification Partnership (PEP) announced at the 2018 APEC meeting, power load-shedding has become commonplace in cities and towns across Papua New Guinea (PNG), disrupting the lives and livelihoods of PNG citizens. While many PNG businesses are able to generate their own power during black-outs using fixed and portable power generators, this adds to their operating costs and isn't an option for most private house-holders.
Without reliable power generation in major population centres, water supplies, sewerage services, and wholesale and retail businesses are compromised, placing increasing burdens on PNG's already struggling economy. On 4/12/2020, New Dawn on Bougainville reported that a weekend power blackout in Buka town, Autonomous Region of Bougainville (AROB) resulted in an estimated loss of over PGK200,000 for freezer-goods suppliers and the hospitality industry. If this example is any guide, the economic fallout from power disruptions across PNG must run into the multi-millions of kina per year.
While environmentally disastrous power generation options such as coal-fired power stations are currently being promoted for power generation in PNG cities and large towns, smaller towns such as Buka town remain reliant on ageing, inefficient diesel generators, running on costly, imported diesel fuel. Given the large areas of land in AROB planted with coconut trees, a case could be made for using bio-diesel made from virgin coconut oil as a cost-effective alternative to imported diesel fuel for power generation.
Coconut bio-diesel was widely used in motor vehicles in Bougainville during "The Crisis" (1988-1997) when the PNG Government's blockade prevented the importation of diesel fuel. Based on this experience, from approximately 2005 to 2010, a Canadian businessman, Lindsay Semple, used his relationship with government officials in Bougainville to promote the potential for a Bougainville-wide bio-diesel project. Mr Semple was the Chief Executive Officer of Invincible Resources Corporation (IRC), a Canadian company whose primary business was to invest in projects in Bougainville. IRC's successor company was the Bougainville Investment Corporation. After investing some of his own money in this proposed bio-diesel project and obtaining USD2 million from a Malaysian company for its further development, the project failed.
This project's failure, and the failure of similar projects in other Pacific countries, isn't due to technical issues associated with using bio-diesel to operate diesel generators. Instead, research conducted in 2010 by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) on the economic feasibility of coconut bio-fuels in the Pacific shows that high labour costs combined with the labour-intensive nature of copra production makes coconut bio-fuel projects uneconomic in most parts of the Pacific. The SPC's research report concludes, "While copra farmers in low-wage locations in remote Melanesia and Micronesia could benefit from local consumption of coconut bio-fuels. there is a need to explore alternative policies to reduce the Pacific's dependence on imported oil, electrify rural areas and increase rural incomes". *
With increasing support from international Non-Government Organizations, the PNG Government and the PEP that relies on solar power as a major contributor to its off-grid goals, solar power generation is shaping up as a practical solution to PNG's electrification issues. According to Christian Lohberger, President of the Solar Energy Association of PNG, PNG Power Limited and the PNG Department of Energy are supportive of the handful of solar power farms under development, such as the Solar Rooftop Pilot in Port Moresby and the Markham Valley Solar Farm in Morobe Province.
In a 1/9/2020 interview published in "Business Advantage PNG", Mr Lohberger states. "....in PNG the economic advantage of solar is....overwhelming. The first medium and large-scale solar projects will be commissioned over the next six months, which will trigger exponential growth in 2021 and likely many more players to enter the market".
* Martyn, T. 2010. The economic feasibility of coconut-oil bio-fuels in the Pacific. Pacific Economic Bulletin Volume 25, Number 3, The Australian National University.
Photo: "Solar Power Farm" from Pexels