A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

282 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingnot treating the Yala project as a step away from fossil fuels, there isthe fact that they had originally planned to build the power plantwithout any carbon finance at all. It is only since the depths of theThai financial crisis, in 1998, that they have contemplated securingsupplementary funding through carbon trading. 126 Encouragingthem to develop the idea have been subsidies from Thailand’sEnergy Policy and Planning Office’s Energy Conservation PromotionFund 127 as well as portions of both a usd 30 million OECF loan undera 1999 five-year Global Environmental Facility (GEF) project and aGEF outlay of usd 3 million toward commercial risk premiums. 128But if the point of the Yala project is to help keep corporations using fossil fuels,how can the credits it generates possibly be tokens of measurable climate benefi ts?The project’s proponents claim that it would save a measurable amountof carbon by ‘replacing’ some of the electricity in the Thai grid that’snow generated by burning fossil fuels.How do they know that the plant would do that?The validator, DNV, realised it had no way of determining that thenew project’s power would be replacing either combined-cycle naturalgas or oil-fuel electricity in the national grid. 129 It was also told byThailand’s electricity authority that it was ‘often a mistake to see adirect link of displacement between an increase in one component ofthe grid and a reduction in another’. So DNV looked at the ‘average’carbon intensity of electricity from the Thai grid. It then subtractedthe figure corresponding to the projected carbon intensity of electricityfrom the project and multiplied that by the project’s output. DNVargued that the resulting figure is conservative, since expansion plansby the Thai electricity authority featured a ‘higher carbon intensityLeaders of the movementthat defeated the proposalfor a coal-fired power plantat Bo Nok on the Gulf ofThailand meet the press in2004. The proposed powerplant was a project of GulfElectric, a firm that hopesto gain carbon finance fora joint venture biomassplant using rubberwoodwaste. Jinthana Kaewkhaaw(right), a local villager with afourth-grade education, wasawarded an honorary Ph. D.from Thailand’s alternativeMidnight University for hertireless efforts against the BoNok plant. Galok Wat-Aksorn(left) is the widow of anotherlocal leader, Charoen Wat-Aksorn (pictured on her T-shirt), who was murdered overa land dispute connectedwith the struggle. The leaderswere voicing their supportfor another movementfurther south battling againstthe establishment of a gaspipeline and gas crackingplant that encroaches onMuslim wakaf commonland and degrades the localenvironment. The allianceof the two movements, onecomposed of mainly Buddhistvillagers, the other composedof mainly Muslims, defiesgovernment attempts to pitThailand’s majority Buddhistcommunity against Muslims inthe south of the country.