Admission of guilt essential

Having been around the block a few times and seen elections, and then corruption followed by coups, I’m starting to see how Suthep Thaugsuban’s action might make sense.

What is the point of an election if cheaters don’t acknowledge there was corruption and are prepared to stand down and share their knowledge of how the corruption was carried out? When people talk about “bribes”, I cannot help but smile. Political corruption in all its forms is built into the system as “payment for services rendered”, to interpret vague rules and regulations favourably, and to speed up the issuing of licences and one-year building contracts with penalties when environmental approval can take two years (or three days).

Is it likely Nattawut Saikuar, who was deputy agriculture minister in the “rice pledging government”, will lead the charge by acknowledging the faults in that scheme in order to help to speed up political reform?

Richard Bowler

 

Biomass could be answer 

for Krabi power station

 

I read with interest the debate about the proposed new power station in Krabi and would like to point out that biomass is currently the most-used form of renewable energy in Europe.

Thailand is blessed with very good agricultural growing conditions for biomass. It could be used to fuel the Krabi power station.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, beneficial biomass includes energy crops that don’t compete with food crops for land; crop residues such as bagasse, straw or corn wastes and forest debris; sustainably harvested fast-growing wood; and sometimes clean municipal and industrial waste.

For example, in Britain the Drax power station has been converted to burn biomass instead of coal. To produce 660 megawatts of power, about 2.3 million tonnes of biomass are burned per year, consuming 1.2 million hectares of forest on a continuous basis.

Already Thailand generates about 1700MW from biomass, the typical feedstock being bagasse fibre from sugar cane, rice husks, wood wastes and empty fruit shells.

The challenges for the future are to provide a reliable feedstock supply using sustainably harvested fast-growing wood, to offer adequate incentives to investors, and to extend the limits of existing power-transmission lines.

Anthony Margetts