Red dot goes black?
April 2, 2008 by Eugene
Filed under Energy and Transportation, Singapore
China Huaneng Group, a Chinese state-owned enterprise has recently bought over Singapore’s Tuas Power, a power plant that produces about 26% of Singapore’s electricity. According to the Business Times, Tuas Power is planning to convert its standby capacity of 1,200 MW that is currently generated by steam plants to be generated by either natural gas-fired plants or coal-fired plants.
Tuas Power’s CEO Lim Kong Puay explained that the capital costs of coal-fired plants (about $2 billion) would be higher than natural gas-fired plants (about $700 to $800 million), but coal-fired plants have lower operating costs. Tuas Power could also tap on its new owner, Huaneng’s vast experience in coal-fired plants in China.
We think it is highly possible that Tuas Power would take the coal route as it wants to tap on the expertise of Huaneng on coal and cut its costs before its competitors (such as Power Seraya and Senoko Power) also acquire new owners and become more competitive. Once there is a coal-fired plant in Singapore, the worry is that other power plants will follow suit and build more coal-fired plants as coal is still more cost competitive than oil and natural gas.
We are against the use of coal for generating electricity because coal is still a dirtier fuel source that emits more carbon dioxide, thus contributing to global warming. A cleaner coal-fired plant such as a modern Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant still emit about twice the carbon dioxide amount as compared to a natural gas-fired plant. The future zero emissions coal plant using carbon capture and sequestration technologies are still in research and not commercially available yet.
In Tuas Power’s Health, Safety and Environmental Policy, they commit to:
Conducting operations in an environmentally responsible manner through maximizing our plant efficiency, resource conservation, reducing waste and controlling emissions
We hope that Tuas Power would remember its own environmental commitment to control emissions and reject the idea of building coal-fired plants in Singapore. If there is a go-ahead by the government to allow Tuas Power to start using coal to generate our energy, does it mean that we are contradicting our stand on sustainable development and climate change?
Source: Business Times via Wildsingapore; Tuas Power. Image attribution: Wolfiewolf.
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Our worry has come true – Tuas Power is building Singapore’s first ‘clean coal’ power plant on Jurong Island. Read the news at http://wildsingaporenews.blogspot.com/2008/09/singapores-first-clean-coal-power-plant.html. What is more worrying is that “the company believes if the plant proves successful, it could pave the way for greater use here of clean coal combined with other fuel sources.”