Environmental Barriers to Geothermal Development in Eastern and Southeastern Asia

Abstract

Significance of environmental barriers to geothermal development has been investigated based on inquiry results from eastern and southeastern Asian countries. Among environmental barriers, there exist legally binding barriers, such as environmental laws and regulations, and legally unbinding “social” barriers such as public acceptance (PA) considering most of PA problems come from environmental concerns. As a result of comparison of inquiry results in different countries, a tendency was found that “the more intensive geothermal development, the higher environmental barrier.” This fact should be noted by the people who plan to develop geothermal energy even if there is no environmental barrier currently. Thus significance of the environmental barrier varies with the stage of geothermal development of the whole country. In addition, significance of the environmental barrier at each site varies with the development phase as: 1) Legal barrier would be highest at the beginning of concession process of the field. 2) PA barrier gradually increases with time if minor problems left. 3) PA and sometimes legal barrier(s) drastically increase if an environmental incident occurs at any stage of development. 4) The initial PA barrier would be higher if other geothermal field have environmental problems. To give solutions to environmental barriers, a literature survey was conducted. In order to protect the environment and to obtain better PA, related literatures recommend to conduct strategic environmental assessment and necessary mitigation and to use appropriate public communication tools. On the other hand, for reduction of legal barriers, one solution would be a zoning of natural parks or conserved forest to enable geothermal development with keeping balance of environmental protection and necessary development. Another solution is “one-stop-window” of the governmental authorization procedure. It is a quite helpful compromise to reduce legal barrier without changing laws and regulations if the spreading of laws and regulations over many authorities is a barrier.