Sudjana warns of coal-burning impact
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)