The answer my friend is blowing in the wind

Although this song reminds me of dreamy hippies, here in Southern Thailand it is reality.

The Rainbow Warrior has arrived in Thailand and was greeted by traditional Thai dancers. My heart beat faster when the ship came into port. I still think it is such an amazing sight and a symbol of hope. Slowly it made its way into the berth (actually slowly because we figured out when low tide came, that the berth is not deep enough and the Rainbow Warrior is sitting in the mud, rather than floating.)

In the afternoon the University of Songhkla gave a workshop about small scale, home made wind turbines as a tool for poverty alleviation for communities.

Did you know that Thailand has quite good feed in tariffs for renewable energy? So in theory communities can make a profit by selling their excess electricity back to the grid. The reality looks different as many bureaucratic barriers prevent people from taking up this opportunity. Furthermore the lack of a Renewable Energy law that prioritises green electricity over dirty electricity means that investors prefer building coal fired power plants and even nuclear has appeared on the agenda last year.

The Thai government forecasts an unrealistic increase in energy demand and instead of investing into energy efficiency and renewables, it gives out big contracts for coal fired power stations and thinks about going nuclear. Despite the fact that they say themselves that there is 1600MW wind potential in Southern Thailand.

Coming from a country where the wind capacity has reached now 22GW (that is Thailand’s overall electricity demand) due to a good Renewable Energy law, it is hard to believe that this cannot be repeated in countries blessed with more coast. If you have ever stood under a big 5MW wind turbine, you might share my feeling of being struck with awe and filled with hope for our future.

So it was more than impressive to see yesterday how passionate people started designing their own low cost, small scale wind turbines and push for a renewable energy revolution from the ground until the government gets its act together.

However Thailand is full of these grassroots movements. The movement against coal has grown so powerful that many coal fired power plants had to be canceled. We will visit one of those communities tomorrow and I will tell you more soon.

Have a look here for more pictures of the Rainbow Warrior's arrival in Thailand.

- Mareike Britten

Quit Coal - Save the Climate

Hello. My name is Beau and I'm the campaigner on board the Rainbow Warrior for the Philippine leg of the Quit Coal, Save the Climate Tour. Our first day on the Rainbow Warrior began with the crew waking up really early to prepare to dock at the Legaspi port from anchorage in the Albay Gulf. For someone who does not know much about ships, it looked like a complex maneuver in order to squeeze in between two boats was needed because the port was quite small. But Captain Mike and his crew made it look so easy and we had landed in no time.

We kicked off the tour with a press conference onboard. Captain Mike charmed the press with stories of how we work with the Rainbow Warrior and other Greenpeace ships. He spoke of SAILING into Philippine waters all the way from New Zealand. Our Executive Director, Von and Climate Campaigner Jasper talked animatedly about our campaign to push for renewable energy while phasing out coal.

The highlight for the day was the declaration of Vice Governor Brando Sael of Albay Province (on behalf of Governor Joey Salceda) that Albay Province would be a Coal-Free Zone. We were very pleased because this meant, zero toxics from coal facilities for the people of Albay, less CO2 emissions going out into the atmosphere. Equally important is the signal that they send to the national government that the environmental, economic and social costs with coal is just too high that investing in coal is just not worth it. The people of Albay feel strongly about this because they know what it is like to be hammered by typhoons year in, year out.

Mabuhay to the people of Albay for this courageous deed!!!

-Beau