A lawmaker on Saturday urged the Departments of Energy and Finance and two more agencies to draw up the rules and regulations for his proposed carbon tax on electricity consumption.
The House bill is meant to help the Duterte administration climate-proof communities highly vulnerable to erratic weather patterns and other devastating effects of global warming, Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte also proposed the DoE draw up guidelines on how to exempt residential consumers whose monthly power usage does not exceed 60 kilowatt-hours or those whose electricity comes from renewable energy sources from the “eco-friendly” tax.
The solon’s proposal, House Bill 4739, also asks the Environment and Budget departments to draw up the rules necessary to implement this proposed law taxing carbon dioxide emissions.
The proceeds of the tax “are to be used solely for programs designed to help high-risk Philippine communities better adapt to the adverse effects of climate change,” Villafuerte said.
HB 4739 also mandates the DoE to issue a certificate to residential consumers using renewable energy sources so they can be exempted from the tax.
“This proposed legislation is timely given that the country’s agriculture sector, which employs a third of the labor force, would be extremely vulnerable to devastating weather events less than 15 years from now,” Villafuerte said.
He was referring to a Department of Agriculture study that found the country’s major rice and corn production areas as “highly sensitive to temperature and water availability” and would therefore be most affected by extreme weather events such as the El Niño and La Niña phenomena by 2030.
Villafuerte noted that in the last quarter of 2016, the agriculture sector pulled down GDP (gross domestic product) growth—although he allowed October-December growth was still high at 6.6 percent—because of the destructive effects of typhoons “Karen” and “Lawin” on farm crops during this period.
“My proposal is both a climate change-mitigation measure and a revenue measure. The carbon tax would have far-reaching benefits that would help prepare communities most at risk to the effects of climate change,” he added.
The agriculture department’s Climate Change Director, Alicia Ilaga, has said the “most evident proof” of the debilitating effects of global warming is the occurrence of El Niño, or extremely dry weather, every two years, and the entry of at least 20 typhoons in the country each year, Villafuerte noted.
The preliminary findings of an Adaptation and Mitigation Initiative in Agriculture study done by the DA also showed the total number of hazard-prone areas in the country will increase by 32 percent in 2050, covering almost the entire country.
