The Inconvenient Truth

How do Malaysians get our power supply? Electricity in Malaysia is powered by hydro power plants. Due to our yearly supply of heavy rainfall and the availability of vast undeveloped areas, hydro dams have been our choice to source power.

There are many arguments that hydro power plants are one of the purest forms of sourcing energy. After all, what is more pure than water itself?

Truth is, the reality is contrary to the popular belief that hydropower is one of the cleanest forms of electricity generation, but the research carried out across South East Asia agrees with previous research carried out in Brazil and other locations. Large scale hydro-electricity generation depends on the building of dams and creation of reservoirs. Water trapped in a reservoir has only one means of escape to continue its journey downstream - passing through a generator at high pressure and making electricity. Unfortunately while the water all gets through eventually, organic matter (plants and plankton etc) often does not and sinks to the bottom of the reservoir where it is trapped in silt and mud in the dark.

The result of this is the release of vast amounts of harmful methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. The hotter the climate at the location of the dam, the worse the effect. One hydroelectric plant in Brazil in 1990 had more effect on global warming than the sum of 54 natural gas power stations generating the same amount of power.

While releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is believed to lead to climate change - i.e. global warming - methane and nitrous oxide are far worse. Methane is 20 times more harmful, and nitrous oxide 200 times more harmful than CO2. Every ton of nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere is as bad as 200 tons of carbon dioxide. Basically speaking hydro-electric reservoirs convert CO2 from the atmosphere into dissolved methane and nitrous oxide which is released back into the atmosphere as the water passes through the generator.

The only way hydro power plants can yield clean energy generation is if we use existing rivers and alter the landscape. However, most dams in Malaysia are built dams. Meaning that we clear out forests and ALL its life forms to create space to flood these dams with rainfall and build concrete walls to create pressure.

So why do we still insist in building more dams? Is it because we need to cater for the increasing need of energy due to globalization and the rise of population here in Malaysia? Both reasons do not even come close.

Malaysia happens to be one of the most blessed countries in South East Asia in terms of natural resources. There are many other alternatives of sourcing power from other sources which can generate the same amount of supply for our needs. Why not use the Sun? Since we have abundance of sunlight!

I recently found out that the reason Malaysia turns to hydro power as its sole power generator is because of a very simple reason. The same reason many other unexplainable occurences happen in this country. Corruption.

If you have seen solar panels on houses, you must know that it is only legal in Malaysia to use solar panels to generate energy for heating purposes. Heating of water that is. Should we use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy, we can be fined by TNB. This is because TNB will be losing out money should we generate our own electricity since it will not be chargable. Amazing isn't it? With our current dams, Malaysia is already generating more than 40 percent of excess renewable energy. We don't need more dams. But we keep doing it anyway. Because building a dam involved millions of Ringgit. And where does this Millions of ringgit go to? Pockets of tenders being passed on from one company to another.

In Malaysia's obsession of building the biggest, largest, longest items, the reason why the Bakun dam was built is for the very same reason. Should the Bakun dam be up and running, Malaysia would have built the second tallest Concrete faced rock-filled dam in the world. The catch here is, Peninsular Malaysia already has sufficient energy generation, so why destroy millions of acres of forests, wildlife and villages to build a dam all the way in Sarawak ( which do not need the energy generated from this dam) and build a underwater tunnel all the way to peninsular energy for no reason?

So while we ease our conscience of using lesser plastic bags to be a part of going green. Be assured that we are hardly doing our bit in saving the planet. Turning the blind eye and pretending that we can do nothing about the bigger picture is killing our planet.

There is a price to pay for everything.. Question is, are we willing to compromise the life of mother nature for our oblivion?