The Energy Ministry has been assigned by the government to help off-load around 5.89 million tonnes of deteriorated rice held in stockpiles with the plan at the first stage to convert around 1.3 million tonnes of the rice into ethanol fuel and the rest into biochar (bio-charcoal).

"The plan is to convert this rice into fuel instead of just burning them. The value of what we will get from converting these C1 and C2-grade rice into ethanol and biochar will be less than the price of the rice when sold to the middleman. The lowering of the stockpile will increase the price of rice and reduce the maintenance cost and that is what we want," Energy Minister Narongchai Akrasanee said yesterday.

The price of Thailand's benchmark 5-per-cent rice fell to its lowest level in more than seven years when it was quoted at US$365 to $368 per tonne last month.

"We have to start with the plan to convert about 1 million to 1.3 million tonnes of the deteriorated rice into ethanol first, as there is less supply of cassava and there are seven ethanol factories that currently have the technology to convert the rice into ethanol fuel," he added.

He explained that the Energy Ministry is ready to buy the rice from the Commerce Ministry as soon as they have "unchained" the lock on the stockpile. The deteriorated rice is being used as evidence in the claims of corruption and negligence against the previous government over its rice-pledging scheme.

Thailand has around 15.4 million tonnes of rice in storage, accumulated under the previous government's rice-buying programme.

"We are ready to start the process tomorrow if required but we cannot convert all of the rice into ethanol fuel since the supply of cassava will eventually recover while the setting up of a new factory would take too long," said the Energy Minister.

The process to convert the 1 million to 1.3 million tonnes of rice into ethanol fuel will take around 4 months.

Narongchai revealed that another way to convert the rice into energy would be to turn it into biochar but this process can be done at any charcoal factory so it can wait for a while. The prices of ethanol fuel and biochar that will be gained from the conversion are similar and it will be determined by how much heat it can produce.

Meanwhile, the Energy Ministry is planning to spend about Bt3 billion of its left over budget (about Bt4.8 billion) to replace government agencies' normal light bulbs and old air-conditioners with LED energy-saving light bulbs and No 5 energy-saving air-conditioners, to cash in on the decline in the price of LED light bulbs. They expect this energy-saving investment will reduce government agencies' electricity consumption by 50 per cent.

Source: The Nation