TNB Talks

KUALA LUMPUR: Even a giant utility company like Tenaga Nasional Berhad can be environmentally friendly.Senior vice-president (corporate affairs) Datuk Abd Razak Abdul Majid says: “TNB, which supports Earth Hour, has always shown the way for generation of power and conservation to coexist handsomely.

“An example is our Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz power station in Kapar, which is coal-fired. As we use low sulphur coal, the amount of sulphur-dioxide emitted is negligible. It is a gentle giant belching neither smoke nor soot. It has impressed ecologists and environmentalists.” Razak says besides meeting strict emission regulations, the power station has also become a meeting ground for birds.

He says more than 10,000 birds, mostly migratory, seek sanctuary at the station’s settling ponds. The fenced settling ponds, teeming with fish, are located along a stretch of coastline buttressed by thick mangrove forests and tidal mud flats.

Thousands of plovers, herons, sandpipers and egrets converge there to rest and to roost.

Razak says TNB also works closely with the Department of Environment for constant online monitoring of the Manjung power station in Perak.

“As a result, the mangrove forests surrounding the plant are thriving as well as activities such as cockle and prawn breeding.”

Razak adds that TNB has ceased its oil-fired power station operations in Port Dickson, and replaced it with combined cycle gas-fired stations, which are cleaner.

All of TNB ’s power plants, says Razak, are environmentally sustainable as the company spends about 15 per cent of its plant construction costs to set up environmental mitigation auxiliaries, such as desuiphurisation units and electrostatic precipitators to absorb dust.