Former US vice president Al Gore urged the Philippines to follow the example of the US in putting an end to the development of new coal power plants.
Gore, founder of the Climate Change Reality Project, said in his presentation to participants to the three-day climate change conference in Manila that electric generation capacity from coal plants in the US stood at 0.01 percent and oil at 0.07 percent in 2015.
He said hydro, biomass and geothermal accounted for 2.3 percent of the total US energy mix. Natural gas contributed 26.7 percent, followed by solar at 32.8 percent and wind at 38.2 percent.
In the Philippines, coal recorded the biggest generating capacity in 2014 at nearly 30 percent, followed by oil at 23 percent, hydro at 18 percent, natural gas at 14 percent and geothermal at 10 percent. The remaining comes from solar, wind, biomasss and waste heat.
Gore advocated the use of renewable energy and urged the Philippines to “put a price on carbon in the markets and “a price on denial in politics.”
First Gen Corp. chairman Federico Lopez said there was a need for the government to look at the Philippines’ reliance on coal projects in power generation.
“At the rate we are going, by 2025 we have 70 percent coal. We cannot say that the Philippines only accounts for that 0.3 of world’s global emissions. To me, it is not right to reason in that manner because whatever emission we spew goes to the same atmosphere,” Lopez said.
Lopez said First Gen, the country’s second biggest power generator, had no coal in its portfolio of power projects. Its portfolio includes geothermal, hydro, natural gas, solar and wind power projects.
“That layer of atmosphere is just like a thin layer of varnish around the globe. When you put it that way, we don’t have much room to fill the atmosphere with more carbon,” he said.
“The later we reverse this trend of carbon emissions, the more drastic its going to be. The more drastic its going to be for everyone trying to reduce emissions,” Lopez said.
“Right now, if you’ve got the opportunity to stop bringing these carbon emissions, you should grab that opportunity. It should have been done yesterday.”
The Energy Department plans to tighten the rules on coal-fired power plants to ensure the facilities meet the standards on emissions, fuel quality and coal handling.
Data from the department showed that as of June 2015, around 5,800 megawatts of installed capacity of coal-fired power plants were located across the country’s three power grids. The bulk or 4,775.6 MW was in the Luzon grid.
Data also showed that some 5,000 MW of additional capacity from 49 coal-fired plants were expected to come online by 2019. These would include the 300-MW project of Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp. and 135 MW from South Luzon Thermal.
