After appointment as the President of Electricity Generating Public Company Limited or EGCO Group, Dr. Jiraporn Sirikum announced her vision of "Empowering for EGCO Group Sustainable Growth" which will guide the entire company along the sustainability road, expanding further the company's "Cleaner, Smarter and Stronger to Drive Sustainability Growth" direction. Under the vision, she will emphasize on three priorities - increasing new power generation capacity in parallel with effective portfolio management, growing revenue and profit, achieving a balance of business and the environmental, social, and governance dimensions (ESG) in order to create additional values to all stakeholders.
Dr. Jiraporn Sirikum said, "As EGCO Group's President, I pledge to strengthen the company's capability and sustainable growth potential with the focus of three goals. Capacity/Portfolio will concentrate on increasing new power generation capacity from both gas-fired power plants and renewable energy projects in support of the energy transition while enhancing Portfolio Management efficiency. The second goal is Driving business performance to maintain positive momentum on dividend payment and corporate credit rating. The third is Green goal in which we will achieve a good balance of business and the environmental, social and governance dimensions (ESG) in order to deliver higher value to all stakeholder and ensure harmonious coexistence and sustainability."
Under her leadership, EGCO Group will continue its operations based on the "Cleaner, Smarter and Stronger to Drive Sustainable Growth" business direction. By Cleaner, the company focuses on improving its conventional power plants to become more environmentally friendly, including the usage of hydrogen co-firing or ammonia co-firing technology, studying and further exploring opportunities for the implementation of CCS and CCUS technology, growing power generation capacity from renewable and clean energy in its portfolio to achieve its short-term goal on increasing renewable capacity up to 30% of the total capacity by 2030.
Smarter refers to ensuring power system security and reliability through acquiring and operating high quality gas-fired power facilities and seeking new investment opportunities in high-growth energy-related business to cope with the technology transition. Finally, to be Stronger through partnership in expanding investment in both domestic and overseas, backed by the advantage of its strong partners in eight countries where it operates. In addition, the company will continue the promotion of learning and knowledge about energy and environment among youth through Khanom Learning Center as well as the promotion of natural resources and watershed forest conservation through Thai Conservation of Forest Foundation
In the second half of 2024, the "4S" strategy will remain the key driver of the business. The focus will be on selecting investment in high quality projects and speeding up projects under construction, especially Yunlin offshore windfarm project in Taiwan, to generate higher revenue and profit. The construction of Yunlin project has made impressive progress as planned. Presently, a total of 74 monopiles and 50 wind turbine generators were installed. The amended completion plan targets the installation of 80 wind turbine generators with total capacity of 640 MW within 2024.
Dr. Jiraporn added, "Key growth factors that will increase new power generation capacity, revenue and profit for the next six months are revenue recognition from several projects including the power transmission to the grid by Yunlin, the sale of renewable projects and 7 projects under construction which are scheduled for completion this year under APEX in the USA, the recognition of additional revenue from CDI in Indonesia and Compass Portfolio in the USA. In addition, Paju ES power plant in South Korea can continuously generate outstanding profit. For new projects, there are high opportunities for us to close M&A deals of conventional and renewable power projects, which will enable us to immediately recognize income. We are looking forward to renewing power supply agreement of Quezon power plant in the Philippines, which is now under agreement revision and will be concluded within this year."
Investment in the CDI has made satisfactory progress. The company has laid out some projects to cope with the increasing power demand and to support green energy development, including floating solar and solar rooftop projects with a total capacity of 35 MW. The construction of the projects will start in the third quarter this year and will gradually commence commercial operations in 2025 onwards. Moreover, CDI is also seeking an opportunity to install solar panels on roofs at additional industrial facilities and studying the feasibility of expanding power generation capacity at the KPE power plant to support new facilities of the Karakatua Posco industrial estate.
"EGCO Group is well prepared for participating in the second round of government's bidding for approximately 3,600 MW renewable energy extension project in Thailand as well as the renewable and gas-fired power plant bidding under the Thailand's Power Development Plan (PDP) 2024. We are studying and further exploring opportunity for the implementation of Direct Power Purchase Agreement (Direct PPA) through Third Party Access (TPA) policy," concluded Dr.Jiraporn.