THAILAND: ‘Clean Coal’ Meet Under Dirty Smokestacks

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK , Feb 20 2006 (IPS) – For Maliwan Naaviroj, coal is anything but a clean source of energy. As a resident of Thailand s northern Lampang province and a victim of the toxic pollutants that spew forth from the coal-fired Mae Moh power plant, she can say this with authority.
People here have breathing problems. Our eyes, noses and throats get irritated from the air we breathe, the 55-year-old told IPS over the phone. There is always a worry about cancer and birth defects.

Her concern is justified. Nearly 300 people have died over the past few years recent years from respiratory diseases linked to the Mae Moh power plant and coal mine. A Thai court has already ruled in favour of local communities, delivering a verdict that required the state-owned power utility to compensate families affected by coal pollution.

It is that message that Maliwan and other Thais who belong to People Against Coal , a group of grassroots activists, will deliver during a planned protest against an international conference to be held in, of all places, the Lampang province, to advance the cause of clean coal as an energy source.

Throwing their weight behind the community activists is the global environment lobby Greenpeace. Thailand should stop the expansion of coal and shift to clean renewable energy, says Tara Buakamsri, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace s South-east Asia office.

He fears that the Clean Coal Conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries, which runs from Feb. 22-25, will open the door for Thailand to be inundated by imported coal to support new coal-fired power plants in the country.
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This conference will make it easier for the Thai government and EGAT (the state-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand) to press ahead with plans to turn to more dirty sources of energy like coal, Tara told IPS. APEC is also pushing to get Thailand to accept coal as a so-called clean fuel.

Currently, Thailand s electricity sector is powered by natural gas, which makes up over 70 percent of the energy supply, local coal from Mae Moh, which contributes 11 percent of the energy, hydropower, which adds six percent, and imported coal, which adds five percent.

Thailand s demand for more power stems from its voracious appetite for energy to feed its industrial, commercial and residential sectors, as also the country s 70,000 villages, 99 percent of which have been electrified.

Thailand consumes 1,448 kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity per capita, as opposed to China s energy consumption, which is 827 kwh per capita, according to a United Nations study. Vietnam, on the other hand, consumes 286 kwh of electricity per capita and Burma, 68 kwh per capita.

But despite being only a minor contributor to power grids, coal as a source of power has generated much heat among local groups and environmental lobbies that are opposed to any expansion of the coal industry s footprint here.

Besides the Mae Moh coal plant, which produces 2,400 mw and is considered the largest of its kind in South-east Asia, another plant in the crosshairs of the anti-coal lobby is a new one being built in an industrial estate in the Rayong province, south-east of Bangkok.

According to Greenpeace, the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate where the new coal plant is being built already has more than 200 smokestacks, which can release pollutants to 25 communities living around the estate.

A health impact study in the area has revealed that groups of disease related to the respiratory system, nervous system, reproductive system, muscle system (and) mental disorder have become much more alarming than (the) rates of the whole country.

The new plant, to be opened later this year, will be a bigger burden for the people and their health, says Suphakij Nuntavorakorn, a researcher at the National Health Systems Research Institute, an autonomous branch of the public health ministry. The health consequences are never factored in when assessments are done for energy planning.

This week s conference, to promote the use of coal within the APEC Countries, is part of this 21-member body s attempt to explore ways of meeting the energy needs of a region which accounts for 60 percent of the world s energy demand.

The Pacific Rim countries that belong to APEC include Australia, Canada, China, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

Of these, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States rate as the world s leading greenhouse-gas (GHG) emitter and have together with countries like India formed the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

This new forum nicknamed the Coal Pact believes that, by using the latest technologies, fossil fuels can continue to be used for power generation and is opposed to the Kyoto Protocol which came into effect in Feb. 2005- as crippling economic growth, if implemented.

APEC s energy ministers have agreed to capitalise on technological innovations to work on clean fossil energy, carbon dioxide capture and geological sequestration, states a report about APEC s Energy Working Group on its website. APEC has also recognised the importance of the mining and metals industry to APEC economies development goals.

But for women like Maliwan, who have been at the receiving end of such policies, it is language that rings hollow. Coal is not clean. It can never be clean, she says. We want the people at the meeting to listen to us because we know this from the air we breathe.