Coal development faces many problems in Indonesia
JAKARTA (JP): Expanding the use of coal in Indonesia still faces several problems related to regional spatial plans and environmental issues and lack of inter-ministerial coordination, a senior official said yesterday.
Director General of Electricity and Energy Development Zuhal said that the government is encountering growing environmental concerns in its efforts to expand the use of coal.
"Therefore, clean coal technology should be applied to enhance its role in the future. The problem, though, is that such technology is very expensive," he said at a three-day seminar on energy starting yesterday.
He noted that Indonesia held about 36 billion tons of coal deposits but 60 percent of them are of low quality.
C.J. Johnson, the head of the East-West Center Coal Project in Hawaii said that the growth in Indonesian coal exports is expected to slow down after 2000 as the domestic market begins to absorb much of the new capacity and less competitive deposits are developed.
"The exports are not projected to exceed 50 million tons and, according to our medium projection, they will decrease after about 2000 or 2005," he told the seminar.
He noted that Indonesia's coal production is projected to reach 75 million tons by 2000 and 125 million tons by 2015.
"Indonesia, China, India and Australia are expected to dominate the growth in coal production over the next two decades, accounting for 97 percent of the increase in Asia's production," he said.
Johnson said that Indonesia's total domestic electricity generation capacity of about 25 gigawatts (GW) over the 1981-1983 period is projected to reach 35 GW in 2000 and over 80 GW in 2015.
Coal's share in the generation capacity is projected to grow by an average of 12 percent per year, from 3.5 GW in 1995 to 10 GW in 2000 and 35 GW in 2015, he added.
He said as a percentage of Indonesia's total energy mix, coal's share is projected to increase from 11 percent this year to 16 percent in 2000 and 21 percent in 2015. (04)