Forecasting of Renewable Energy Demand and Supply of Thailand

Abstract

This paper presents the long-term energy consumption and renewable energy supply in Thai economic sectors; i.e. agriculture, construction and mining (ACM) sector, manufacturing sector, transport sector, household sector and service sector, by using both bottom-up MAED and top-down MESSAGE models. Three main scenarios, focused on energy demand and supply including energyrelated CO2 emission, with the base year of 2005 to 2030 have developed in this study which comprises Business-as-usual (BAU), energy efficiency (EE) and long-term national renewable energy development (REDP) scenarios. Under the BAU scenario, manufacturing sector have the main share at 38.38% of the energy consumption followed by transport, household, service, and ACM sector, respectively, while the EE scenario has the same trend with the BAU. Under the REDP scenario, with 8% share of renewable energy in final energy consumption, the share of biomass would increase with 0.01% compared with the BAU in 2030. Manufacturing and transport sector are the main targets for biomass applications in Thailand especially in biofuel production and steam generation or heating processes. This implies that if the world oil petroleum prices fall, the biofuel consumption would then decrease from fuel switching and the price subsidization from government in ethanol or biodiesel may still be required for keeping the biofuel proportion as in national REDP. Under the supply case, in 2573 found that Thailand will share the electricity from combined cycle power plants together accounted for 55.72%, followed by thermal power plants, coal and lignite power plants and renewable energy power plants accounted for less than 0.01. While the EE and REDP scenarios have the same trend with the BAU. In the case evaluation in CO2 emissions from power generation. The year 2573 found that the combined cycle power plants accounted for 54.38% followed by thermal power plants and found that renewable energy power plants will reduce emissions of CO2 0.002%. In case of renewable energy supply, domestic plantation is sufficient for overall biomass production under REDP. However, due to the limited land, research for higher yield and the agreement with neighborhood countries for plantation should be strongly considered for long-term biomass production.