ENERGY-ASIA: Cleaner Energy To Fuel Economic Growth
KUALA LUMPUR, Dic 19 (IPS) - Mammoth power projects to fuel the furnaces of economic growth are taking shape across Asia as the region prepares to propel itself into the next century.
Demand for energy in the world's most-populous continent is projected to grow by as much as eight percent a year -- at least as fast as the economy. Foreign investors smell potentially huge profits and are on a mad scramble toward Asia.
Asian Development Bank (AsDB) vice president Bong Suh Lee estimates Asia's energy-related projects will need up to 50 billion dollars annually between now and the year 2000.
Electricity consumption, especially in Pacific Asia, is growing at double-digit figures, way ahead of the three percent growth rates in the developed countries.
The total installed capacity in Asia more than doubled in the 1980s, exceeds 350,000 megawatts today and will pass the 500,000 megawatt mark by the year 2000, the AsDB says.
But countries are already experiencing shortfalls. China and India, two of the region's biggest nations, find themselves immediately short of at least 18,000 megawatts each.
Such figures are keeping governments, economists and tycoons occupied. But environmentalists say they have failed to ask the more crucial questions of whether Asia really needs that much energy, and what type of projects would be best.
The questions become all the more difficult as the region's governments ponder how to provide power for billions of people who lack electricity at a time when many of Asia's cities are already choking in pollution or smog.
Gurmit Singh, adviser to Malaysia's Environmental Protection Society, says there is much room for energy conservation, especially in electricity.
"It's energy that we need, not electricity," he says. "The problem is, people think it's a sign of modern living to just flick a switch and have power. They are ashamed to use a kettle with fire underneath. It's actually more efficient to use firewood."
While he is by no means urging a return to firewood, Singh says the point is that many consumption habits can be traced more to convenience than to efficiency or logic. Electricity does not occur in nature, he says, but is consumer-friendly because instead of fuel pipes you have "power lines between poles".
© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service