Is Hydrokinetics Coming to Myanmar? Probably Not
We’ve all seen the plummeting prices of solar, wind, energy efficiency solutions, energy storage and the rest. And while all that’s good, it creates huge stressors on other areas of clean energy technology: hydrokinetics, biomass and geothermal. Having said that, there are still a great number of companies hard at work to deliver cost-effective marine and run-of-river hydro, one of which is Oceana Energy Company.
I just got off the phone with a colleague who is extremely well-connected to the top energy officials in Myanmar, who’s asked my opinion on Oceana Energy in preparation for a call with William Nitze, the company’s chairman. From their website:
(Nitze) served as Assistant Administrator for International Activities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, from 1994 to 2001, where he made environmental security a focus of the agency’s international work by establishing a formal working relationship among the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and EPA on environmental security issues.
As President of the Alliance to Save Energy from 1990 to 1994, Mr. Nitze led a broad coalition of business, government, labor, and consumer interests in supporting and implementing programs to promote energy efficiency. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment from 1987 to 1990, Mr. Nitze was the principal working level negotiator on multilateral environmental issues ranging from trade in endangered species to climate change. In 1988, Mr. Nitze played a key role in creating and organizing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Nice pedigree, to be sure. And in Myanmar, two-thirds of the people in the country have no electrical power. Now that the sanctions are being lifted, there is a mad in-rush for the deployment of some technology that will address this enormous new demand. But the bottom line is this: Oceana claims to be able to produce electricity from ocean river currents at $200/MWh, which isn’t competitive with fossil fuels. If hydro is going to work here, it probably will not be in the form of hydrokinetics, but in hydroelectric dams, which, of course, have numerous harmful effects on the environment in which they are built and operated.
At this point, it seems that ocean and river hydro will work only in a few cases where the resources are high—and so is the cost of supplying electricity with other resources (e.g., shipping in bunker diesel).
It may be a mistake to assume that because a country did not have massive electrification that there is an immediate massive demand for power.
Our society and our culture is run in a way that connects various electrical demands with electrical supply. A country like Myanmar (formerly Burma) which did not have a similar electrical supply also did not have the same demand.
I once traveled the streets of that country and admired the various shops and industries. It was not uncommon to walk into a shop and there would be no lights on at all. But the store also did not have a front wall. It was built a bit like a single or double car garage and there were no front walls. The mild climate did not require as much protection from the elements and natural lighting was considered acceptable.
Once architecture in this country made far more use of natural lighting. In our older buildings from 100 years ago you can find many old skylights that were used to bring natural light into the interior of a building. Although here there are several types of “solar tubes” that are attempting to bring natural lighting back into favor, we have largely abandoned design that takes the natural environment into consideration.
Instead what many places need is an alternative heat source. Present burning of wood or charcoal for cooking and light industry is not sustainable in crowded places. In many situations solar ovens can provide an alternative and lead to ways to store that energy in prepared food (also stored without the need for refrigeration by drying, pickling, canning etc…)
It may be that we will export our wasteful concepts to places like Myranmar just as we have banned here and essentially exported our habit of smoking to the third world. I am not entirely sure every attempt to make money in these countries is a positive step for the world. We tend to go there with a kind of hubris assuming our way is the only way and don’t bother to take a look around at what they have that we don’t or understand what resources we have that they are missing.