1. Background
Energy demand is expected to rapidly increase in the Asia-Pacific region. Especially, electricity demand in Southeast Asian countries will increase by 140% between 2012 and 2035. It is estimated that about US$ 990 billion investment will be required in power sector in order to satisfy the electricity demand hike.
It goes without saying that not only short-term financial interest but also long-term and appropriate perspectives such as CO2 emissions reduction and resilience should be taken into consideration in selecting energy infrastructure. Even at the APEC Ministerial Meeting on November 2014, Ministers recognized that (i) lifecycle cost (LCC), (ii) environmental impacts, and (iii) safety such as resilience to natural disasters constitute the key elements of infrastructure quality, and agreed the APEC Guidebook on Quality of Infrastructure Development and Investment.
2. Objective
Based on the spirit of the Guidebook, with a view to developing high quality electric power infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has launched an Initiative for Enhancing Quality of Electric Power Infrastructure, which is mainly aimed at formulating a guideline for that purpose. The scope of the guideline we currently have in mind is as follows.
TARGET: The users of this guideline would be government officials in charge of electricity business and electric power providers including national power companies and independent power producers (IPPs).
AIM: This guideline will provide important elements to be considered when developing individual high-quality electric power infrastructure such as power plants and energy transmission and distribution system.
ELEMENTS: The elements will include, but not limited to, the performance of infrastructure (e.g. efficiency,durability, resilience), externality (e.g.environmental impacts, safety, local involvement), and lifecycle cost.
COVERAGE: This guideline will cover not only the selection of contractors but covers the whole lifecycle from planning stage to operation and maintenance (O&M) and end-of-life stage.