Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has announced that his country will be powered by clean energy, gas and hydro and 70 per cent electricity coverage by 2030.
He said this in his statement to PNG Parliament on government priorities and initiatives since returning to office promising to continue with key priorities in free education, health, law and order, infrastructure development and growing the economy. He said one of the objectives is the boost electricity capacity using cheaper, cleaner energy and pass savings back to the people.
“We are now building a high voltage grid from Tari to Hides to Mt Hagen to connect to the Ramu grid. Discussions are taking place to expand the Hides power generation plant by at least another 20 megawatts to connect to this high voltage grid and we are working closely with both the landowners and Oil Search to build another gas fired power generation capacity in Kutubu so that landowners can participate fully in the development of the gas fields in their areas.“What that means is that we get cleaner energy and the energy price is much cheaper than the heavy diesel that we are using today and prices we are looking at heavy diesel is 14 cents per kilowatt hour on average and gas fired is between seven and nine cents per kilowatt hour.
“There will be a huge reduction in the cost generation of power in the country meaning that we want to pass that to our consumers, mums and dads and all our businesses who are in need of a huge power supply for their living and businesses, we can pass the savings onto them,” he said.
PM O’Neill said that in Port Moresby, work is in progress to bring in 54 megawatt of power at the plant site and that will be extended to another 40 megawatt by MRDC and landowner group who are building power plant at plant site that will increase capacity to at least 100 megawatt power stations in Port Moresby.
“We will shut down Kanudi where we are depending on fuel generation, we will power Port Moresby by gas and hydro in Yonki.
“There are solutions that we are developing for Lae and Madang and other parts where we are going to where World Bank has built some hydro stations. We are trying to rebuild them again where for many years it has been neglected and the turbines have stopped generating power and are going back fixing each one of them now,” he said.
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