Court issues injunction suspending energy regulator’s list of wind-power suppliers
Energy Absolute Plc (EA) has won a reprieve after its wind-farm subsidiary failed to win a contract to supply power to the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat).
EA announced that the Central Administrative Court on October 10 issued an injunction ordering the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to suspend its decision to approve the list of wind farms to supply electricity pending a ruling.
EA’s share price was 46.00 baht as of 1pm today (October 16).
The court suspended ERC’s decision to buy 1,500 megawatts of wind-powered electricity at the feed-in tariff type on grounds that the selection process was non-transparent, EA said.
Its subsidiary, Wind Khon Kaen 2 Co Ltd, filed the lawsuit on October 10, alleging that the ERC’s April 5 decision to select wind power plants was not transparent and thus unlawful.
EA said the court gave five reasons for its ruling:
- The ERC failed to provide Wind Khon Kaen with key facts and legal technicalities on which it based its selection.
- The ERC and the subcommittee in charge of the selection of the wind farms did not announce terms of reference or technical data for the selection of winners. As a result, the selection process was apparently not transparent.
- Wind Khon Kaen’s request for evaluation results by the subcommittee went unheeded, in violation of standard procedure.
- Since Wind Khon Kaen could not crosscheck the criteria for technical scoring, the subcommittee in charge of selection could have abused its authority.
- Since the same subcommittee both gave the technical scores and selected the winners, its decisions might not be fair.
