Sudjana warns of coal-burning impact
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Mines and Energy I.B. Sudjana emphasized yesterday the importance of anticipating the environmental impact of the increasing use of coal for power generation.
"There are various challenges related to the environmental impact of using coal that should be given more attention," he said yesterday at a two-day seminar on clean-coal technology, organized by the Indonesian-Netherlands Association in cooperation with the Dutch state-owned company Netherlands Agency for Energy and the Environment.
He noted that environmental concern about coal utilization has not yet become a major issue in Indonesia as overall domestic coal consumption per capita is still low.
However, he said that the use of coal for power generation will increase in the future.
Sudjana said that the government has been diversifying the use of primary energy for power generation. Oil, which dominated fuel use for power generation in the past, is decreasingly used.
He said that in 1995, the oil share in the total fuel consumption decreased to about 46 percent and was substituted by other energy sources, mainly coal.
"During 1994, coal-fired plants in Java and South Sumatra with a combined capacity of 4,400 MW burned 5.5 million tons of coal," he said.
He said the demand for coal will increase steadily along with the construction of more coal-fired power generations.
Electricity demand will grow at 12 percent per annum in the next few years.
In 2004, the demand will reach approximately 190 million MWh.
He pointed out that to meet the demand, 24,000 MW of new electric power facilities will be built until the year 2004, of which two-thirds will be constructed by the state-owned electricity company PLN and one-third by private power producers.
"Of the total capacity, about 11,000 MW will be generated by coal-fired power plants," he said, adding that about 175 million tons of coal will be burned from now until the year 2004.
"This has raised our concern on how to minimize the potential impact of this increasing use of coal for power generation," he noted.
"It is clear that clean coal technology has to be given more consideration in the future," he said.
To lower the emissions from coal burning, the power plants will have to use the Flue-Gas-Desulphurization as an additional pollution prevention measure, he noted.
"Consequently, this would require an additional 15 percent to 25 percent in capital costs. But we have to commit ourselves to having a clean environment for sustainable development," he said.
The coal seminar was also addressed by Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs G.J. Wijers who shared Sudjana's view on the importance of using clean coal technology to lower pollutive emission.
Wijers, who met President Soeharto before addressing the seminar, said that more than 4,000 MW or 45 percent of his country's electricity supply is generated by coal. The Netherlands imports all of its coal needs, including some from Indonesia.
"Annually, we use nine million tons of coal for electricity production and six million tons for industry," he noted.
However, he said that coal is a fuel with a relatively stable and low price. "There are a lot of coal producing countries, so the coal market is very competitive," he noted.
On the first day of the seminar Djiteng Marsudi, president of the state-owned electricity company PLN, signed an cooperation agreement with H.R. Kleijn, president of Dutch engineering company Kema, to improve the efficiency of power plants in North Sulawesi. (13)