DAVAO CITY—Local environmental groups challenged President Aquino to show his sincerity when he bragged about his administration’s push for renewable energy while inaugurating the first of a series of coal plants to be operating soon in Mindanao.
“If the Aquino administration is sincere in its rhetoric of inclusive development, it should prioritize community-based renewable-energy solutions. It should be people-led and not corporate-driven,” said Dr. Jean Lindo, cochairman of the environmental network Panalipdan Mindanao.
The group has been criticizing Malacañang for alleged “bias for corporate-led development, which favors projects like the coal-fired power plants.”
In his speech on Friday’s inauguration of the 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant here, Mr. Aquino said “allow me to point out: it’s not as if we have forgotten our goals in terms of developing renewable energy, and doing our part to mitigate climate risk.”
“In fact, we have increased our usage of renewables, and they now make up 33 percent of our energy mix; we have reduced the number of illegal logging hot spots by 88 percent; and in 2011 we started a National Greening Program, the goal of which is to plant 1.5 billion trees on 1.5 million hectares by this year,” he said.
“We did all this, even if our nation’s carbon emissions are minimal, especially compared to more industrialized countries,” he added.
The energy crisis that has hounded Mindanao over the last two decades was also pointed out by President Aquino for the necessity of the coal plants to be operational soon. “The Mindanao situation has made it obvious that we also need more base-load power. After all, while I am a believer in developing renewables, at this point, we are still hounded by the questions: What if there’s no wind? What if the clouds are overcast and the solar efficiency is down? What if we do not have enough biomass? Unfortunately, right now, we cannot wean ourselves completely from relying on coal.”
Environmentalist groups have cited the attendance of Mr. Aquino in the recently concluded United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in France as an obligation to have skirted on the promotion of coal.
“This is a counterproductive move that does not help mitigate the effects of climate change, particularly for food security,” said Geonathan Barro, executive director of another environmentalist group, Masipag Mindanao, who said that the inauguration of the coal plant in Binugao, Toril district here “is a backward step for the Philippines.”
Barro pointed out that the coal emissions by coal power plants aggravate climate-change patterns, causing unpredictable rainfalls and extreme weather conditions that are detrimental to farm productivity.
“We need to be focusing on sustainable climate-mitigation measures which do not harm the environment. Rather than relying on unsustainable power sources, we should instead harness our renewable sources of energy which are very abundant in the country,” he said.
“Climate justice is distributive justice. Countries with coal-fired power plants should retire from using coal and, instead, invest on renewable energy. The Philippines should not build more coal plants and should start
retiring the existing ones,” she said.
The watershed advocacy group Interface Development Interventions (Idis) also warned about the coal-fired power plants as “clear and present threat for the city’s water resources due to the high risk of contamination from its toxic waste water by-products.”
“All over the world, coal-burning power plants have been pointed out as one of the top polluting industries. In US alone, it has been estimated that its coal power plants are responsible for the annual release of at least 5.5 billion pounds of pollution into their rivers and waterways. And despite this alarming fact, the Aquino administration continues to implement policies which favor the coal industry,” Idis Executive Director Ann Fuertes said.
She said coal power plants produce toxic pollutants like lead, mercury and arsenic.
She emphasized that “even with the current clean-coal technologies, pollutants are merely moved from one waste stream to another but will still be eventually released into the environment.”
“Whatever containment methods they will use, the probability of these pollutants escaping into the environment will still be high,” she said.
The groups said Malacañang can still patch up its error by putting up “stricter monitoring” of the coal- plant operation.
“We have to be even more vigilant in safeguarding our environment now that the coal plant is operational. The Multipartite Monitoring Team, which includes representatives from the local government agencies and from the Environmental Management Bureau, should strictly monitor its impact on air and water quality, as well as the health of surrounding communities,” they said in a statement over the weekend.
They said that copies of Therma South’s Environmental Impact Statement and environmental compliance certificate, “along with the monitoring data, should also be made available to the public so that we will know if the company is complying with the environmental measures in order to mitigate its negative impact.” (Manuel Cayon, Business Mirror)