Port Moresby’s power blackouts may now be over.

After 15 years, Papua New Guinea’s national government and its Chinese partner, PNG Hydro Development Ltd, formally launched the Edevu Hydropower Project located along the Brown River area outside Port Moresby.

PNG Hydro has invested K650 million (NZ$302 million) in the project which is one of Central Province’s biggest assets that will supply electricity not only to Port Moresby but the whole Southern region in the near future.

• READ MORE: Other PNG power reports

The government has partnered with the developer with K120 million (NZ$56 million) for a 132KV transmission line from Edevu to Port Moresby which is already under construction, on top of the K650 million spent by the company.

PNG Hydro Development Ltd managing director Allan Guo said it took them almost 15 years to reach the launch of the project and this was possible through the good relationship and discussions they had with the landowners of Edevu.

He said it was a private investment without any guarantee from the government because they believed that their investment would greatly have an impact on the lives of the people and country as a whole.

Prime Minister James Marape (pictured in inset above) thanked the developer for having trust in PNG and privately funding the project.

‘Wonderful reflection’
Marape said it was a “wonderful reflection of an investor”, who saw this opportunity thousands of kilometres away, and had faith in PNG.

He said what Edevu landowners had done, by going into partnership with a foreign investor, was a good example for traditional landowners in the rest of the country.

“You have shown a wonderful example to other landowners right across our country.

“You [landowners] own 97 percent of land rights. My government, as governments of past, and any government into the future, will not break that right you have. It is your inherent, God-given right to your land.

“But land sitting idle is of no use to us, or more importantly, our children and their children that will come into the future,” Marape said.

The Sirinumu Dam and its Rouna 1, 2 and 3 stations are the main suppliers of electricity to Port Moresby and surrounding areas.

However, years of neglect and usage has led to much of the equipment becoming worn out, resulting in constant blackouts in Port Moresby.

Also a growing population places a huge demand on power uses which results in overloading.

The PNG Power Limited has also raised concern in the past about illegal power connections.

Maxine Kamus is a PNG Post-Courier Reporter. Republished with permission.

Two days after being elected as Prime Minister again in Papua New Guinea, James Marape took his first official trip as the country’s leader while hitting the ground running in groundbreaking clean green energy projects he has been championing over the past two years.

He met with leaders of Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) in Singapore yesterday to progress the talks further.

After numerous questions on the trip to Singapore taken by Marape on Friday afternoon a statement was released about midnight through other social media platforms.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the PNG elections

In the morning, the PM’s Department released the statement at 7.30 am after the country became aware of Marape’s trip to Singapore.

The Prime Minister flew to Singapore to continue important trade and investment conversations, including those on Papua LNG, Pasca LNG, Pn’yang LNG and also to get Porgera and Wafi-Golpu sanctioned.

He said from Singapore that FFI had voiced its intention to partner with Papua New Guinea in a big way to harvest clean green energy from both hydro and geothermal sources and to move into solar and wind energy production.

Currently, FFI has identified and set up project sites in Gulf Province for hydro and West New Britain Province for geothermal work and has been working in these areas since the signing of two important agreements since 2021.

Clean green energy way of future
Marape said from Singapore: “With global consciousness of fossil fuel-induced global warming, clean green energy is the way to move into the future and this meeting follows on the head agreement PNG has signed with FFI to progress investment in this energy sector.”

The Prime Minister also visited the PNG High Commission in Singapore with a view to strengthening it further as a trade and investment office while getting the PNG government to increase trade and investment with the ASEAN and APEC countries.

He said: “The Singapore office will be given more support in that context in partnership with Investment Promotion Authority, the Kumul companies, National Fisheries and Forestry authorities, and our Agriculture and Livestock departments so that it coordinates export and trade into the lucrative Asian market of over 2 billion people who need food and energy, and products PNG can mass produce into the future as we are planning under my government.”

Republished with permission.

Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya paid a visit to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo at the palace last October 31 bearing good news. A group of scientists had confirmed the finding of a new orangutan species called Tapanuli orangutan, she reported to the President.

Less than a year later, the global scientists who researched the endangered species sent two letters to the Presidential Palace. The first letter in July said there was a Chinese-funded hydropower project in the orangutan habitat that “could be the death knell for the Tapanuli orangutan, by flooding a key expanse of its habitat and, even more crucially, by slicing up its remaining forest home with new roads, power lines, tunnels and other built facilities”.

The scientists believe only 800 Tapanuli orangutans remain in their habitat, the Batang Toru ecosystem in South Tapanuli regency, North Sumatra.

The apes, with frizzier hair than their Bornean and Sumatran counterparts, have been threatened by poaching and illegal logging. The planned dam, they believe, will make the species’ chance of survival slimmer.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has included the species – Pongo tapanuliensis – on its red list, calling it “critically endangered”.

The second letter, dated August 16, reiterated the scientists’ request, saying that they had collected scientific evidence that had led them to believe the project “should not have been approved initially by the North Sumatra provincial government”.

‘Green’ dam
The company responsible for the project, PT North Sumatera Hydro Energy (NSHE), denied the scientists’ claims, saying that the hydropower plant, designed to produce 510 megawatts of electricity, was an “environmentally friendly” project, which would not flood much of the Batang Toru ecosystem.

The NSHE said the hydropower plant, which used “run-of-river technology” and had Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro as the contractor and operator, would only flood 67.7 ha of area in Batang Toru, which is not a protected forest but an area penggunaan lain (nonforest estate). The company also argued that it had completed all the necessary documents required by the North Sumatra administration.

The company, which is financially backed by a consortium of Chinese and international banks, said it had taken measures to protect the orangutans and that it was also interested in protecting the forest because its project depended on the abundance of water in the Batang Toru River.

“We will join any effort in the future that aims to better the orangutan habitat,” Agus Djoko Ismanto, a senior adviser to the NSHE, said recently. “We are not planning to inundate 9600 ha,” Agus said.

Poacher threat
The scientists, however, are not convinced.

One of them, Bill Laurance, director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at Australia’s James Cook University, said in-depth scientific analysis of the conservation status and threats to the Tapanuli orangutan had found that when new roads appeared, apes disappeared.

The NSHE confirmed that besides the 67.7 ha that will be flooded with water; about 600 ha will be used to build roads, tunnels and other infrastructure.

In the letter addressed to the President in July, 25 scientists from all over the world, including Jatna Supriatna from the University of Indonesia, said that instead of approving the dam project, the government should have had initiated forest restoration efforts in Batang Toru.

“Roads are a particularly insidious threat because they open the ape’s habitat to poachers, illegal loggers, miners and land encroachers. Recent scientific analysis shows that the Tapanuli orangutan survives only where roads are almost entirely absent,” the letter said.

1.3 million supporters
Environmentalists and others all over the world have voiced their support for the scientists. A global campaign to save the species began early this month and had gained more than 1.31 million supporters.

“As citizens from across the world, we urge you to save the last 800 Tapanuli orangutans from extinction by canceling the Batang Toru hydropower dam project. The fate of this entire species rests in your hands, “the petition on avaaz.org said.

Protests from national environmentalists have also escalated into a lawsuit. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the regional administration’s decision to issue permits for the power plant.

One of the organisation’s lawyers, Golfrid Siregar, said the permit issuance was problematic on account of the lack of discussion and participation from locals.

Separately, the director of Walhi’s North Sumatra office, Dana Prima Tarigan, said the power plant could also cause an ecological disaster, as it would be located near an earthquake-prone area in the province.

In response to the growing calls, the Environment and Forestry Ministry had held a coordination meeting with the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry and the company to discuss possible solutions.

Task force
“After the meeting, we established a joint team comprising personnel from both ministries, the company, regional administration and the Indonesian Orangutan Forum [Forina], which is task with looking for alternatives to be applied in the area,” the ministry’s natural resources and ecosystems director-general Wiratno said last week.

One of the solutions offered by the company, he added, was to build an “orangutan corridor” that would help the animal migrate between the two forest areas in Batang Toru.

Should the concept be applied in the area, it will become the first corridor to be implemented in Indonesia.

“It, however, was still an idea. The team will need to go into the area first before offering possible solutions. We are still waiting for data from the field,” Wiratno said.

Kharishar Kahfi contributed to this story for The Jakarta Post from the capital of Jakarta.