A STUDY OF COMMUNITY RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS MOVING TOWARDS BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES BASE ON SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SATHYA SAI SCHOOL THAILAND

Abstract

Renewable Energy (RE) is a solution to address various environmental and energy problems such as climate change from GHGs emission and high cost of conventional energy. However, RE system itself is intermittent and its technology as well as production cost is very expensive and need to be imported. Although production quantity (supply) is increased, it still doesn’t meet with people’s demand. Therefore, to meet with people’s demand, RE and conventional energy needs to be used concurrently. The mentioned disadvantages of RE make people and communities feel hesitated to initiate self-reliant RE because they worry about the efficiency and quality of RE. Regarding this, organization working on standard control, then, defined a universal standard for energy management such as ISO 50001:2011, this international standard is based on the Plan - Do - Check - Act (PDCA) continual improvement framework and incorporates energy management into everyday organizational practices. Nonetheless, these universal standards are only suitable with some projects and contexts but cannot cover every project, especially small projects. This research aims to present different aspects of Community Renewable Energy (CRE) projects management, emphasizing on practice which is unrestricted, simple, and flexible to surrounding environment and eventually will lead to sustainability in the community. The case studied is RE projects of Sathya Sai School Thailand, an education-based community which has community-like organizational management. The community residents believe in potentiality of RE and in self-sustainability, beginning with micro scale in the community which will impact to reduction of the global warming crisis at global level. This research uses both qualitative and quantitative method. For qualitative method, field observation was used to find RE specific site characteristics and interview was used to find participation of community members and benefit they gained from RE projects as well as, importantly, identity of people and culture in the community. For quantitative method, preference questionnaire was used to find out community residents’ attitudes and preferences on the issues of CRE projects management and theirs benefit and to explore genuine involvement of community residents. The results of exploring direction to Best Management Practices (BMPs) for CRE are from actual understanding of elements in the community, way of life, characteristics of geography, climate and natural resources, and from the use of method that is appropriate to the context, with sustained practice by community residents as a core of management. Furthermore, experiences can be sprung further by exchanging of knowledge between networks in order to improve RE to be suitable with dynamic environment both in academic and professional fields.