The Hong Kong government has said that its planned 90 million m3/year desalination plant will cost more per unit of water than other plants in the region due to inflation and distribution and customer service costs. The government plans to build a desalination plant in Tseung Kwan O which is expected to have a unit cost of $12/cubic metre – substantially higher than other planned facilities in the region. I ...

Secretary for Development Paul Chan says a planning and investigation study for a desalination plant in Tseung Kwan O will be completed by the end of next year. Speaking to lawmakers today, Mr Chan said the plant will open in 2020 at the earliest. The study scope covers detailed feasibility studies, preliminary design and cost-effectiveness analysis. The proposed plant will have an output capacity of 50 mil ...

Japan had some optimistic economic news last week showing that the country's GDP expanded by 0.9 per cent last quarter – its quickest pace in a year. The data suggest that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's aggressive stimulus measures may be working. They certainly seem to be working to improve this reputation: investors are more confident in a Japanese leader than any time since September 2010, according to a po ...

The civic administration has taken a much-needed step towards making citizens accountable for every drop of water they consume and also to measure its loss through leakages. The civic body has started work on a pilot project to install water meters in 1,200 households in Sahkarnagar and Rajas society at a cost of Rs 3.77 crore. The water metering system will help the civic administration calculate the quant ...

Chinese solar stocks continued their impressive rally after The New York Times reported that the U.S. and Europe agreed to negotiate a deal with China rather than hitting its solar-panel makers with punitive tariffs. However, a recent report from Reuters claims that Europe and the United States both said on Tuesday they were not holding coordinated talks to negotiate an end to a trade dispute with China ove ...

German solar giant Conergy is predicting 20 per cent annual growth in the Australian solar market between now and 2015 as commercial-scale solar systems become competitive with the local electricity market. Conergy said the levellised cost of energy (LCOE) for solar PV systems in Australia had fallen to just under 13c/kWh, which is less than half of the average retail price in the country. It says commercia ...

Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Chubu Electric Power Co. are in talks on their joint construction of a coal-fired thermal power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, east of Tokyo, informed sources revealed this week. This is a rare move in the Japanese power industry where few companies do business in their peers' service areas and may become a catalyst for knocking down power suppliers' regional monopoly, observers s ...

More power plants are needed in the South to prevent blackouts like the one that Thailand has experienced this week, Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand reveal to the population. Egat Governor Sutat Patmasiriwat said the existing three main plants in the South were only able to supply 1,600 megawatts of power, while the region consumes about 2,500MW per day. Hence, he said, Egat had no choice but t ...

The massive power outage that struck in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam’s southern provinces Wednesday was caused by the cargo of a crane truck that struck a main cable. The incident, which unleashed chaos in streets, schools, hospitals and businesses throughout HCMC, took place at around 2 p.m. and the power was not resumed for several hours, the country’s power monopoly Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) said in a ...

The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) on Wednesday apologised for the massive power blackout in 14 southern provinces on Tuesday night and explained how it happened. “Egat would like to apologise to the people for this incident. We have ordered an inspection of all electric power transmission lines to the South to prevent a repeat of it,” Egat governor Suthat Patmasiriwat told the media. M ...