The Cost of Energy
The podcast conversation with Guillaume de Langre last year was a valuable opportunity to gain insight into the complex and challenging situation in Myanmar, where the Tatmadaw's violent coup has created significant obstacles to providing electricity to the people. As an expert who spent several years working in Naypyidaw as an adviser to the Myanmar Ministry of Electricity and Energy, de Langre had a unique perspective on the challenges facing the country, and was able to provide valuable insights into the political and economic factors that are impacting the ability to provide power to the people. His words were powerful, and his message was clear: the situation in Myanmar is dire, and urgent action is needed to address the crisis and ensure that the people of Myanmar have access to the electricity they need to live, work, and thrive.
“If there are new projects that are built there, it’ll be at a higher price to the government.”
“Today, the power supply in Myanmar is lower than in 2017. It's about at the same level as 2016. It's a dramatic drop in power generation in the country. I think the country that you could compare it most accurately to is probably Lebanon, right in terms of a complete collapse of the production capacity.
A few caveats to that. First of all, a bunch of people are saying now that the electricity supply in Yangon has suddenly become much better. The reason for that is two parts. First of all, the monsoon has returned and so the dams are starting to fill up. And so that there's going to be an increase in quality of supply over the next few months. Second of all, Naypyidaw has actively decided to channel a lot more of the power that was being dispatched to rural areas to Yangon, because the level of anger in Yangon was starting to be really problematic. And so the better quality of supply that you're seeing in Yangon in the last week is at the direct expense of secondary and tertiary cities in the rest of the country. That's the situation of the electricity sector.
I think that looking ahead, every dry season is going to remain very tricky, at least for the next two, three years, at least. And I think that the objective of reaching 100% access to electricity, and enough power for all of those new customers on the grid, which used to be 2030, that deadline is most likely going to be missed, because of a lack of funding, a lack of interest of the junta in electrification. And also the fact that very few companies today are willing to cooperate to work with the junta, there are going to be some companies that are going to jump in, but nowhere near the level of the pre-coup times! A lot of dam projects now are completely suspended or abandoned, or in some kind of limbo state. A lot of solar projects are now completely abandoned or suspended as well. And the country risk in general has increased. So if there are new projects that are built there, it'll be at a higher price to the government.”