{"id":979,"date":"2006-11-21T15:08:43","date_gmt":"2006-11-21T07:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=979"},"modified":"2006-11-28T13:37:54","modified_gmt":"2006-11-28T05:37:54","slug":"975-of-300-mv-coal-power-plant-vs-2400-mv-dam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=979","title":{"rendered":"[975] Of 300 MV coal power plant versus 2400 MV hydroelectric dam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, The Star reported that there’s an opposition to a plan to construct a coal power plant in Sabah<\/a>:<\/p>\n

LAHAD DATU: A coal-fired power plant in an area earmarked for eco-tourism in Silam is yet to get off the ground but already it is stoking up anger among several groups in this part of east coast Sabah.<\/p>\n

The most vocal opponents to the 300MW plant, said to cost between RM1.2bil and RM1.3bil, are a group of environmentalists, social activists and local businessmen in this booming agriculture town.<\/p>\n

They fear the plant will do more harm than good for them and the environment stretching from Darvel Bay to the pristine Danum Valley forest, some 80km away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to officials, the power plant would utilize clean coal technology<\/a>:<\/p>\n

KUALA LUMPUR: The technology used for coal-based power plants is different compared to that used previously, Deputy Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has been a lot of talk of clean coal technology for the past few years in Malaysia but I’m still skeptical on how clean the power plants, including the one in Sabah, would be. Furthermore, I’m unsure how the power plant plans to store the carbon byproduct, i.e. waste.<\/p>\n

Regardless the technology used, I wonder though, why do we need a 300 megawatts power plant when we are going to have a 2,400 megawatts Bakun hydroelectric dam soon? Why do we need another 300 MV coal power plant when most output of the 2,400 MV dam would not be used?<\/p>\n

Not too long ago, the Sarawak state government wanted to build a metal smelter plant<\/a> as an economic justification of the construction of the mightily huge Bakun dam. Without the smelter, the state government believes that the construction of the dam wouldn’t be justified, especially when the plan to connect the Malay Peninsula with Borneo via an underwater cable was scrapped due to the Asian financial crisis of the last decade. If the operator of dam really couldn’t find a buyer for its electricity, surely the Bakun dam could accommodate whatever the Sabah coal plant would accommodate. By the way, the Bakun dam is expected to become operational by mid-2009.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, certain engineering issues regarding electricity transmission between Bakun, Sarawak and Sabah necessitates the construction of the new coal power plant in Malaysian Borneo?<\/p>\n

If there’s none, then somebody better explain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, The Star reported that there’s an opposition to a plan to construct a coal power plant in Sabah: LAHAD DATU: A coal-fired power plant in an area earmarked for eco-tourism in Silam is yet to get off the ground but already it is stoking up anger among several groups in this part of east […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}