Thai Billionaire Vongkusolkit Family's Banpu Buys Stake In Australian Energy Storage Project
Thai energy company Banpu—controlled by the billionaire Vongkusolkit family—is buying a 50% stake in a A$700 million ($460 million) energy storage project in Australia, as the Bangkok-based coal producer scales up investments in clean energy.
The Wooren energy storage project, located in Latrobe Valley, Victoria, will have a power output of 350 megawatts and a storage capacity of 1,400 megawatt-hours when completed by the second half of 2027. It will be capable of supplying electricity to up to 230,000 households continuously for four hours, enabling it to supplement supply during times of peak demand.
Banpu Energy Australia, which will inject an A$110 million into the project, will build the facility in partnership with EnergyAustralia, which will be the sole off-taker of Wooren's electricity.
'We believe that BESS (or battery energy storage systems) will play a critical role in supporting clean energy infrastructure,' Sinon Vongkusolkit, CEO of Banpu, said in a statement released on Monday. He added that its investment in green energy would help Banpu achieve its goal of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 and reach net zero target by 2050
Outside its home market of Thailand, the company operates in Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, Vietnam and the U.S. Besides their stake in Banpu, the Vongkusolkit family also has interests in privately held Mitr Phol Group, one of Asia's largest sugar producers, and listed property developer Erawan Group, which has over 90 hotels including the Grand Hyatt in Bangkok. With a net worth of $1.3 billion, the family is among the wealthiest in Thailand.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wall Street Journal
an hour ago
- Wall Street Journal
Quinbrook Shuffles Leadership as It Focuses on Supply Chains, Critical Minerals
Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners is making leadership changes to facilitate its expansion as it focuses on a critical-minerals supply chain strategy that includes building factories powered by renewable energy. The Houston-based clean-energy infrastructure specialist with roots in Australia last month named Managing Director Brian Restall as the firm's chief executive, a newly created role. He will move into the job by year-end. Restall currently is Quinbrook's regional leader for Australia.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Red States–And AI–Are Big Losers From Trump's Clean Energy Massacre
P resident Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act – assuming the version Senate Republicans passed on Tuesday becomes law–would cut the legs out from under the renewable energy industry. The biggest hit: The bill would quickly phase out federal tax credits that have for years enabled wind and solar developers to offset 30% or more of project costs. Yes, it could have been even worse. At the last minute, the Senate's Republican leadership ditched a proposed excise tax on wind and solar projects using Chinese components which could have added 20% to the cost of many projects. But it left in a fast phase-out of the tax credits. Moreover, there are lots of other anti-green, pro-fossil fuel bullets the industry didn't dodge. The bill would open more federal lands to oil and gas leasing at lower royalty rates; end tax credits and other subsidies for electric vehicles; and refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. There's also a new tax break to incentivize mining metallurgical coal, now to be considered a strategic mineral. Uncertainty, and the looming end of federally subsidized tax equity financing, could plunge renewables investing into a deep freeze, says Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of Houston-based EDP Renewables North America (which operates wind and solar plants). 'It severely hamstrings the U.S. ability to meet skyrocketing power demands and dilutes its economic competitiveness on the global stage,' she says. Ironically, the impact will hit especially hard in Republican areas–a fact that Forbes (and others) thought last November might protect the industry from such savage cuts. A map (below) created by Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, shows that 78% of renewable energy projects underway are located in Red districts. Why is Trump so determined to kibosh economic growth in Texas, where last Saturday afternoon solar power met 31% of the grid's 77 gigawatts of power demand and wind power provided 15%? Sure, gas-fired generation still led with 35%, but coal provides merely 13% of the state's electricity needs. The trend is clear: Growing, power-hungry states like Texas and states where the sun shines or the wind blows, have been increasingly relying on solar and wind power. The How Green Is Your State? map makes clear that geography matters more than ideology when it comes to the adoption of green energy. Windy, sparsely populated and Republican South Dakota (Trump won 63% of the vote in 2024) gets an enormous portion of its retail electricity from renewable sources. Tiny, densely populated Delaware, Joe Biden's home state, gets almost none of its retail electricity from green sources. Complaints about the bill's assault on green energy have come from all quarters. Elon Musk calls the energy components of the bill 'insane and destructive,' saying they will destroy millions of jobs. Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions, compares the impact to 'terminating 1,000 Keystone XL' pipelines (Biden, of course, terminated just the one). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a statement said 'taxing energy production is never good policy.' But that hasn't swayed Trump, who in an interview last weekend with Fox's Maria Bartiromo made clear his determination to undo the Green New Deal aspects of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. His dislike for both Biden's legacy, and wind and solar energy in particular, seems almost visceral. 'We're doing coal,' Trump declared. 'I don't want windmills destroying our place. I don't want these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up half a mountain and they're ugly as hell.' And, he said, 'They're made in China.' So get ready to pay more for electricity, and to compete with big tech and artificial intelligence for the power supply. Recent growth in electricity demand from data centers has been stunning. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab data shows that in 2018 data centers used 76 terawatt hours (TWh), or 1.9% of domestic electricity; they project that will hit at least 325 TWhs (6.7% of the total) by 2028. Consultancy Rystad Energy eyes a 16% rise in overall U.S. power demand by 2035. But without affordable renewables (or rapid breakthroughs in nuclear fusion) the electricity to feed all those AI data centers may not arrive in time. Most are integrated energy projects. Meta, for its Sucre data center in Louisiana, is partnering with Entergy to invest $3.2 billion in gas turbines to provide reliable electricity for its computers, and another $1.5 billion into wind and solar–to reduce its carbon footprint. In Abilene, Texas, the Stargate consortium of OpenAI, Oracle and Microsoft is erecting its first data-gigacenter for its proximity to plentiful wind power, yet for redundancy they are also erecting 10 onsite gas turbines from GE Vernova. But 'more natural gas' is not the answer that Trump might think it is. That's because, while the U.S. is rich in gas, there's a shortage of gas turbines. Get on the waiting list for a new gas turbine now and you'll be lucky to get it in five years. 'We see many facilities that are slated to enter service in 2028, but newly built turbines are not going to be delivered until 2030,' says Zack Krause, an analyst at East Daley Analytics. 'Without growth in rapidly deployed solar, the U.S. economy will grind to a halt,' warns Ed Hirs, a lecturer in energy economics at the University of Houston. Last year, 81% of new power projects nationwide were solar and batteries. A third of that solar build out, some 11 gigawatts, was in Texas, to power data centers. California and Florida each installed about 5 GW. 'Humans are already competing against AI and crypto for electricity,' says Hirs, who credits crypto miners with raising Texas' wholesale power prices by 5% in 2023. Data centers like Stargate have so far been welcomed to rural Texas with compliant permitting and tax abatement packages. But it won't take much more than a heat wave or two to spark a showdown between AI's needs for reliable power and humans' desire that their air-conditioning not go out in the middle of summer. The pushback has already begun, with a new Texas law (S.B. 6) set to allow grid managers to disconnect data centers when electric demand is high. That makes it a good time to own irreplaceable power plant assets in Texas, like Constellation Energy and Vistra Corp., do. The Senate bill's excise tax was dropped after Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski–the last holdout needed for the 51 to 50 passage (with Vice President J.D. Vance voting)— called it 'just entirely punitive to the wind and solar industry.' She had joined Iowa's Republican Senators, Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, in pushing an amendment designed to protect green credits for longer, which never got a vote. It's no mystery why Ernst and Grassley led the effort; Iowa gets an outsized 83% of its electricity from wind and solar. In the latest version, it appears that developers will need to start their wind or solar projects within 12 months of the bill's enactment in order to get full tax credits with no deadlines. Projects starting later must be completed by year end 2027 in order to claim credits before they sunset. Other unintended victims of Trump's demolition of Biden's green energy incentives could be the so-called Southeast Battery Belt across the Carolinas and Georgia. Large scale battery storage deployments nearly doubled last year to 30 gigawatts nationwide due to demand from solar projects to balance intermittent loads. But if this bill goes through as expected, there could be less demand than expected for Toyota's $13 billion lithium ion battery plant under construction in North Carolina and Hyundai's $8 billion combination battery and car factory in Georgia. The Big Beautiful Bill does support advanced nuclear power, including $125 million to develop small modular reactors for military use. The AI industry loves the low-carbon, small-footprint potential of nuclear fusion, with billionaires Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates and Sam Altman (and even Secretary of Energy Chris Wright) all startup investors. Not all of them are happy with the shifting sands. Houston energy trading billionaire John Arnold has invested heavily in long-distance transmission lines as well as geothermal, lithium and fusion startup Helion. Arnold reflected the energy industry's collective consciousness when he tweeted Monday about Trump's Big Beautiful Bill: 'Reversing which fuels get subsidies and which get penalized every time control of Washington shifts is about the stupidest way to run an energy system that needs long term planning and stable supply chains.' More from Forbes Forbes How An Unassuming Geologist Cracked The Global Fertilizer Cartel By Christopher Helman Forbes Gold To Top Bitcoin And Silver On Way To $4K Per Oz, Says Goldman Sachs By Christopher Helman Forbes Meet The Tiny Startup Building Stargate, OpenAI's $500 Billion Data Center Moonshot By Christopher Helman
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Autohome's International English Website Launches on June 30 Building an Information Hub for Chinese Automakers Going Global
HONG KONG, July 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Autohome Inc. (NYSE: ATHM; HKEX: 2518) ("Autohome" or the "Company"), the globally leading online destination for automobile consumers, announced the official launch of its international English website on June 30. This new platform aims to build a leading global information hub for Chinese automakers, providing overseas users with car viewing and selection services, and fully empowering Chinese automotive brands to expand internationally. Global Reach, Spanning Four Continents Deeply rooted in key markets with a global vision, Autohome's international English website spans its business footprint in four continents: Asia, Europe, Australia, and South America. The first phase will deeply cover six countries and regions, including HKSAR, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Brazil. Through localized operations and precise content pushing, Autohome aims to help Chinese car companies establish efficient connections with overseas consumers, promoting the globalization of Chinese automotive brands. Vast Selection, All in One Website Leveraging 20 years of professional data accumulation, Autohome's international English website boasts a detailed database, including 52 official Chinese export brands, covering 894 car series and over 1,900 models. Users can easily access accurate pricing, core parameter configurations, models comparisons, and other key information, achieving one-stop experience from perception to decision-making, significantly improving car selection efficiency. Seamless Adaptation Across All Platforms To meet the diverse needs of global users, Autohome's international English website supports adaptive display on PC, mobile, and tablet devices, ensuring a smooth browsing experience in different scenarios. Regardless of location, users can access the latest and most comprehensive Chinese automotive information and services in the most convenient way. Mr. Yang Song, CEO of Autohome, stated: "The launch of the international English website is an important milestone in Autohome's globalization strategy. We hope to remove information barriers for overseas users regarding Chinese car models through a professional and transparent information platform, while providing strong digital support for Chinese brands going global." About Autohome Autohome Inc. (NYSE: ATHM; HKEX: 2518) is the leading online destination for automobile consumers in China. According to QuestMobile, in March 2025, the average mobile DAUs reached 76.92 million with an increase of 10.8% year-over-year. Its mission is to engage, educate and inform consumers about everything auto. Autohome provides occupationally generated content, professionally generated content, user-generated content, and AI-generated content, a comprehensive automobile library, and extensive automobile listing information to automobile consumers, covering the entire car purchase and ownership cycle. The ability to reach a large and engaged user base of automobile consumers has made Autohome a preferred platform for automakers and dealers to conduct their advertising campaigns. Further, the Company's dealer subscription and advertising services allow dealers to market their inventory and services through Autohome's platform, extending the reach of their physical showrooms to potentially millions of internet users in China and generating sales leads for them. The Company offers sales leads, data analysis, and marketing services to assist automakers and dealers with improving their efficiency and facilitating transactions. Autohome operates its "Autohome Mall," a full-service online transaction platform, to facilitate transactions for automakers and dealers. Further, through its websites and mobile applications, it also provides other value-added services, including auto financing, auto insurance, used car transactions, and aftermarket services. For further information, please visit: View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE autohome Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
