Region needs $674b for power utilities: UN expert
Region needs $674b for power utilities: UN expert
SINGAPORE (AFP): Asia-Pacific developing economies require massive investments of up to US$674 billion in power utilities to meet soaring demand for electricity, a UN energy expert said here yesterday.
China, India and South Korea account for nearly 50 percent of the total investment required, said Pranesh Chandra Saha of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), based in Thailand.
He quoted an ESCAP estimate which put China's additional power requirement during the decade to 2000 at up to 129,000 megawatts, India's at 61,000 megawatts and Korea's at 24,000 megawatts.
Electricity demand in all developing countries of the region is projected to grow to 779,000 megawatts by 2000, up from 474,000 megawatts in 1990.
Saha told a conference on the power sector that 40-45 percent of the total investment would go to finance electricity transmission and distribution systems, which could end up costing up to US$303 billion.
"To meet sustained high economic growth, the demand for electricity in developing economies of the ESCAP region has been growing at a remarkably high rate and this growth is expected to continue in the future," Saha said.
Electricity demand in the region has been growing at about nine percent per annum on the back of rapid economic and population growth, he said.
Much demand is unmet, and per capita consumption in many developing countries of the region is still very low compared to that of industrialized nations.
China's per capita consumption of electricity, for example, is less than 10 percent of Australia's. India's is five percent of Australian consumption. Only 12 percent of Bangladesh's population has access to electricity.
"There is a suppressed demand. If you bring electricity to the people, they'll consume it," said Saha, who works with ESCAP's energy resources section.
"Electricity, as a high-grade and clean form of energy, has many advantages in comparison with other forms of energy. Therefore, electricity production and consumption will continue to increase at a faster rate than overall energy demand," the expert said.
Just a fraction of the enormous funding required in the highly capital-intensive sector is being met through official channels such as loans from the World Bank.
Strapped for funds and faced with huge unmet demand, many governments in the region have deregulated their power sector to allow domestic and foreign private sector participation.