Indonesia: Govt slammed for choosing coal

Greenpeace has berated the government for replacing petroleum with coal to meet the nation’s energy needs, highlighting that carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants are one of the main contributors to human-induced global climate change.

“Coal produces 29 percent of carbon per energy unit higher than oil and 80 percent of carbon higher than gas,” Red Constantino of Greenpeace International told a press conference Thursday.
The government has announced that coal will replace oil within the next ten years to meet domestic energy demands. Indonesia plans to build coal-fired power plants to generate around 10,000 megawatts of electricity by 2009.

Constantino said that as an archipelagic nation, Indonesia is highly vulnerable to climate change. If sea levels rise, many regions in Indonesia could be submerged, he said.

The environmental group predicts that by 2030, 72 hectares in Jakarta will be submerged, and that by 2050, 160 ha of the city will be underwater.

Jakarta Post