Finland’s Peat Fuel to Indonesia

Indonesia plans to build peat land powered electric generators with the help of Finnish experts. The project is expected to be completed at the beginning of 2008 with hope to reduce oil fuel dependency – because Indonesia’s oil production has been declined due to aging of some oil wells and the slow speed of finding new wells.
The plan is to build two peat land projects; each generates 30megawatts in West Kalimantan province where there’s a huge potential of peat land. This will increase the electricity power in this province which still needs 20 megawatts more.
Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter, forms in wetlands or peat lands. Upon drying, peat can be used as a fuel. It has industrial importance as a fuel that produces heat and electricity in Finland where the amount of peat is 26 % of the land area.. It is harvested on an industrial scale and provides approximately 6.2% of Finland’s annual energy production.
In addition, there will be four other projects, one is to establish coal-powered electric generators as part of the government plan of building 10,000 megawatts power plants, supposed to be delivered in 2008.
Indonesia’s electricity sector provides a huge opportunity for investment, but the country only is able to meet 55 percent of the demand in the sector. To reach the demand, the country plans to build power plants with a total capacity of 25,000 megawatts.
However massive peat burn is speeding climate change due to its release of carbon and methane. For example, in 1997 the peat and forest fires in Indonesia released between 0.81 and 2.57 Gt of carbon, greater than the carbon uptake of the world’s biosphere.

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