BLCP Coal-fired Power Plant - The Climate Killer

BLCP Power Limited is the developer of a 1,434 MW coal-fired power station in Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate in the Rayong province of Thailand. The US$1.37 billion financing facility for the BLCP power plant was signed on August 14, 2003.  The sponsors of the project are Banpu Power and CLP International, which is part of the Hong Kong-headquartered transnational firm China Light and Power (CLP).  This multi- billion dollar project has received financing from various sources, including a $245 million direct loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).  Nippon Export and Import Insurance (NEXI) provided $163 insurance for the portion financed by private banks.  Up to $140 million loan was extended to the project by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) along with a political risk guarantee of up to $70 million for co-financing with a number of overseas commercial banks, $620 million coming from twelve Thai commercial banks.

Wicked links of big coal

The engineering, procurement and construction contractor is under Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.  The notorious Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (now EGAT Co. Ltd.) is the offtaker under a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement.  The coal will be supplied by Australian Coal Holdings, which is 100 percent owned by the Australian company Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto is the largest coal mining company in the world.  It is expected that the BLCP coal plant will require approximately 3.5 million tonnes of coal per annum delivered by Rio-Tinto.  Thailand only recently started buying Australian coal, with 136,000 tonnes ordered in 2000.  Due to plans to increase the number of coal-fired power stations and lobbying by the Australian government and private sector to purchase so-called "clean Australian coal", Thailand's coal imports is expected to increase to more than 50 million tonnes by 2020.

The great coal swindle.

Banpu is a major shareholder of the BLCP project.  It is known as the single largest coal business in Thailand, the world's seventh-largest coal miner and Asia's fourth-largest coal exporter.  Owning huge reserves of coal in Indonesia and China, Banpu has increasingly enjoyed making profits out of a pan-Asian investment strategy on coal since it was listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 1989.  Banpu's coal business and lignite coal plant of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) has been going hand in hand at Mae Moh, Lampang's northern province of Thailand-one of the most notorious epicenters of coal-generated pollution in Asia.

China Light and Power (CLP), another major shareholder of BLCP, is presently responsible for construction management and is the major shareholder in the operating company of BLCP's coal plant called Power Generation Service (PGS).  CLP's coal plants in Hong Kong, where its headquarter is based, continue to be the subject of protests by local environmentalists.

These coal barons - Banpu, CLP Power and Rio Tinto - were recently at the forefront of the dirty energy industry's private events, organizing last January the infamous Coaltrans Thailand Conference, a major meeting of the global coal industry hosted by EGAT in Mae Moh. The conference was organized specifically to deepen the carbon addiction of the developing world to coal and at the same time lobby governments unaware of the industry's dark agenda by packaging, for instance, BLCP's coal plant project as state-of- the-art, clean coal technology.

The Coaltrans meeting, however, became the scene of protests organized by People Against Coal - a national network of affected communities, local activists, advocacy groups and environmental organizations in Thailand demanding the government and coal industry to stop expanding the dirty coal business and to switch to clean renewable energy.

BLCP's coal plant project is a clear example of how public and private finance colludes with governments and transnational coal and power companies that operate with scant regard for the health of communities and the local and global environment.