A Thousand Solar Megawatts, Gone with the Coup
The podcast conversation with Guillaume de Langre is an illuminating and powerful discourse that delves into the complexities of Myanmar's energy sector. As an advisor to the Myanmar Ministry of Electricity and Energy, Guillaume offers a firsthand account of the progress that was being made in expanding the country's electrical grid under the National League for Democracy (NLD) government, and how that progress came to a devastating halt with the military coup. His insights are not only informative, but also poignant, highlighting the human cost of political upheaval and the essential role of access to energy in driving economic and social development. It is a must-listen for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the forces shaping Myanmar today.
“The coup did not trigger a crisis, instead it canceled out the emergency measures that were decided by the NLD administration.”
“Let's look at what was happening in the few years right before the coup in the energy sector. At that time, it was pretty clear that there was going to be some kind of energy crisis, because the electricity demand was growing faster than expected, and NLD administrations were not adding enough generation capacity to the system. So that gap kept growing, and there was a point where it was going to reach a crunch.
Some decisions were made that were designed as emergency measures to avert this crisis. So in 2019, they increased the electricity prices, which was really important because they were at that point losing about $500 million in electricity subsidies!
They commissioned a bunch of emergency rental gas power plants, some of which would be running on imported gas from the Middle East. And then in 2020, they commissioned 29 solar farms, solar plants, to be dispatched all over the country.
The coup did not trigger a crisis, instead it canceled out the emergency measures that were decided by the NLD administration, because as soon as the coup happened, the solar companies that were going to build the solar plants, were thinking that the country risk just went way up. They don't know if they could import materials into the country. They don't know if they could bring workers into the country to actually build the power plants. This all seems very tricky….
On top of that, they agreed to sell electricity to the government at a certain price that was quite low, very competitive prices. But now that there's massive instability in the country, they don't really think that their true cost of producing that electricity is reflected in that pre-coup price.
And the junta was saying, ‘We want to buy that electricity, we want you to go ahead with those projects, according to the original pre-coup terms.’ And there's no way the companies are doing that! So that's 1000 megawatts of solar that just disappears overnight and doesn't get built.”