Coal Consumption for Electricity Generation in Malaysia (Million tons) 

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... 1896, a Swedish chemist, Svante Arrhenius put forth the idea that carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions from combustion of coal could enhance the greenhouse effect and lead to global warming [1-2]. Now, the contribution of CO 2 towards global warming has been well known and taken as a fact. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the highest contributor to the emission of the gas reportedly came primarily from the energy sector [3-5]. Malaysia and Indonesia contributed 161.92 and 595.6 million tons of CO 2 , respectively, last year. In Malaysia, coal consumption for electricity generation grows at a rate of 9.7% per year, and is expected to increase substantially to meet the rising demand for energy. The electricity demand will increase by 4.7% per year. The growth in electricity demand is heavily influenced by strong demand from the industrial sector, which increases at 5.4% annually. Electricity demand for the residential sector will also experience strong growth of 4.9% per year. Per capita electricity demand is projected to be more than double from 2002 to reach 7,571 kWh/person in 2030. In Indonesia, coal consumption grows at 4.7% per year. Electricity demand grows annually at 4.6% to reach 108 GW in 2030 [6]. Considering the ever increasing demand for coal fired electricity, it would be interesting to understand and analyze the pattern of CO 2 emissions from the two countries. Thus, this study is carried out in order to predict the emissions of CO 2 from coal fired plants from 2005 to 2020, by correlating the percentage of coal for energy mix and coal consumption for electricity generation. The study also reviews some of the available technologies for carbon capture for new coal fired power plants in Malaysia and Indonesia. The data used for this study are the percentage of coal for energy mix data, coal consumption for electricity generation data and emissions of CO 2 . These data are collected from various researches reported in the past and present [6-11]. Methodology. This study uses the scenario approach for the analysis. Schwartz [12] states that scenarios are tools for ordering perceptions about alternative future environments. Although the end result might not be an accurate picture of tomorrow, it can be utterly useful for making decision about the future. No matter how things might actually turn out, both the analyst and the policy maker will have a scenario that resembles a given future and that will help one think through both the opportunities and the consequences of that future. This analysis is based on the pattern of coal consumption for electricity generation. Some of the data are readily available but other unavailabe data have to be calculated with respect to the countries electricity consumption trend. All the computation is performed using ® curve fitting toolbox (cftool) of Matlab R2008a. In 2008, the total coal consumption for electricity generation in Malaysia is 21.15 million tons calculated based on 7 power plants, with 8120 MW installed capacity. Figure 1 shows the consumption of coal from 2005 to 2020 increases from 12.4 to 36 million tons. The increase in coal consumption has contributed to the changes in CO 2 emissions pattern in Malaysia. As a direct consequence, the total CO 2 emissions from coal fired power plants will reach 98 million tons by 2020, a two point sixty five-fold increase from 2005 as shown in Figure 2. The emission will continuously increase with the construction of new coal fired power plants and the increase on the capacity of existing coal fired power plants. In Indonesia, the consumption of coal for electricity generation is 39.7 million tons (computed based on 25 power plants in 2008, with 11376 MW installed capacity). Figure 3 shows that the total consumption of coal from 2005 to 2020 grows from slightly over 12 to about 75 million tons. The total CO 2 emissions from coal fired power plants in Indonesia is expected to increase from 69.4 million tons in 2005 to 171 million tons in 2020 such as as shown in Figure 4. Similarly, this CO 2 emission will continuously increase with the construction of new coal fired power plants and the increase on the capacity of existing coal fired power plants in Indonesia. Carbon Capture and Storage. There are three alternatives to reducing CO 2 emissions without hampering economic growth. One is to use energy more efficiently, thereby reducing the energy consumption. The second option is to employ renewable energy sources that do not emit CO 2 . The third option is to burn fossil fuels while capturing and storing the CO 2 instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. The option of burning fossil fuels while storing the CO 2 instead of releasing it is referred to as “CO 2 capture and storage (CCS) ”, “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) ” or “CO 2 sequestration”. CCS involves three distinct processes: (i) capturing CO 2 from the gas streams; (ii) transporting the captured CO 2 ; and (iii) storing CO 2 in geological formation [13-15]. The capture and storage of CO 2 presents one of the promising options for large-scale reductions in CO 2 emissions and is considered as competitive with other future carbon mitigation options. The cost to reduce CO 2 emissions from CCS technology is 2.5 €c/kWh as shown in Table 1. CO 2 Capture. CO 2 capture systems refer to the integration of CO 2 capture in pre-combustion capture routes with the best suited capture technologies (i.e. absorption, adsorption, membranes and cryogenics ) to mitigate CO 2 emissions from coal-fired power plants. The most demanding part of this approach is the capture and separation of CO 2 from other exhaust gas components. There are three main routes to CO 2 capture from combustion processes as shown in Figure 5 [17-20]: (i) Post-combustion capture , where the CO 2 in the exhaust gas coming from a standard gas turbine combined cycle, or a coal-fired steam power plant is captured through the use of chemical or physical solvents [17, 20-21]. (ii) Oxy-fuel combustion , using concentrated oxygen rather than air for combustion has the advantage of increasing the CO 2 concentration in the flue gas ( > 80%), eliminating the need for expensive downstream separation equipment. Oxygen can be supplied from cryogenic air separation and fed to either a boiler or a gas turbine. In order to avoid high flame temperatures, the CO -rich flue gas is often recycled to make the ...