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Journal of Social Sciences

Authors

Thita Orn-in

Publication Date

2015-01-01

Abstract

Electricity from renewable sources produced by Very Small Power Producer (VSPP) is a promising scheme that not only strengthens energy security, but also provides solutions to the problem of sustainability and environmental governance. In the future, community's VSPPs will be an important contributing factor for Thailand's 25 percent Renewable Energy production to be met, but currently this issue received inadequate attention. A study at Mae Kam Pong's Micro Hydro power project was conducted in order to illustrate that multi-partner governance. This community's VSPP project marks a new paradigm of decentralized, inclusive and green energy production. Success, challenges as well as the opportunity for the project to be replicated, could be explored to show the feasibility for such schemes to be replicated. To conduct this research, in-depth interviews with key informants from the community, their partners from firms and civil societies as well as other governmental authorities were made. This paper argues that the formation of hybrid environmental contributes to the establishment of community VSPP projects as it introduces new model of energy security towards the local income distribution in terms of human security. Although communities become more empowered by partnering with firms and civil society, the state is still a dominating actor that restricts community actors to participate in VSPP. As project faced challenges caused by policy and government norms, other community projects are less likely to be able to replicate in mass scale unless government regulations are changed so that it supports such formation. Although the project is doubted with financial sustainability, the project brought up a platform of inclusive governance regime within the community. Keywords: Hybrid Environmental Governance, Community VSPPs, Energy Security, Inclusive Environmental Scheme, Renewable Energy, Local Electrification, Micro Hydro Power Plant

First Page

37

Last Page

51

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