Coal Plants Scrapped

The government of Sabah announced that they had killed a plan to build a controversial 300-megawatt coal-fired plant in the tourism-driven eco-paradise. The plant had been proposed to help meet the state's energy shortages, which regularly inflict brownouts on Sabah's 3 million residents. Instead, Sabah will tap its relatively abundant store of natural gas. 

That's not the cutting-edge renewable-energy portfolio environmentalists consider ideal, but it's certainly cleaner than coal. And because the state's vast clean-energy potential is still largely undeveloped, it's the most immediate practical solution to the growing local power needs. Officials anticipate a 7.7% annual increase in demand through 2020. 

Imperfect though the natural-gas solution may be, it marks a huge course change toward clean energy in Malaysia, says Daniel Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, who directed an energy and environmental-impact study commissioned by a coalition of green groups, which was used widely in the discussions of Sabah's energy options. "It is a turning point that should bring deserved praise and partnerships to Malaysia at the upcoming climate conference in Durban, South Africa," says Kammen, now the chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank. 

This is the third defeat for the proposed coal-fired plant — which would have been Sabah's first such facility — in three years. The first two proposals were shot down by the federal Department of Environment and local opposition. And even though the latest one seemed to be heading in that direction after it failed a detailed environmental-impact assessment in August, anticoal activists nevertheless worried it would eventually be approved because it was slated for federal land and had the backing of the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.


Sabah's chief minister, Musa Aman made the official announcement of the coal-fired plant's cancellation on Wednesday. That move followed a recent National Economic Advisory Council meeting attended by federal and state officials, including Najib and Musa. The decision was made in part, Musa said, because "the government under the Prime Minister's leadership is a government that always listens to the voices and feels the pulse of the people."

Maybe. But after a three-year campaign to get those voices heard, Sabah's environmental activists might beg to differ. Nevertheless, they're reveling in what is an unusual victory. Activism isn't exactly common in Sabah.
"I don't think there had ever been such a movement [in Sabah] over any other issue before," says Cynthia Ong, who heads one of the five environmental organizations that collaborated on the anticoal campaign. "The groundswell of dissent, which started local and became international, was a key piece."
High-profile environmental organizations like 350.org promoted Sabah's anticoal message. Some international media coverage didn't hurt either. Environmentalists don't fear a fourth site being proposed down the road.
"I think coal power is dead for Sabah," Ong says. "We are certainly going to do everything we can to ensure that."

Source: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2052627,00.html

Green Sabah Says: Although this news isn't new, but I'm still glad that the Sabah State Government had scrapped the coal plants project in Sabah after many disagreements from the Sabahans. This shows that our voices are heard by the government. Hope that Sabah will adapt greener technology for power generation within the states such as wind power, solar power and other alternative sources of energy in order to improve the electricity shortage within the state.