Is coal the answer?

Ruffy Magbanua

THE Movement for Blackout-free Mindanao is  sending this distress call  to President Rody Duterte: make Mindanao completely free from power outages under your watch.

Mindanaoans have suffered so much, Mr. President. We badly need your newly appointed  Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi to address with a sense of urgency the island’s power headache by presenting sustainable  solutions acceptable to the people of Mindanao.

After all, Mindanao is your adopted homeland. You promised us about the changes we fought side by side during the campaign, and one of those was to provide Mindanao with sufficient, adequate, sustainable  and reliable power supply for the island’s inclusive growth.

Seriously we dare to say: No more power blackouts. No more bombings of transmission towers.

But to address Mindanao’s power lack through the  dumping  of coal plants all over the island is another story and something we are dead serious,  Mr.  President.

We feel worried about what this coal would bring as far as protecting our people from the discord of environmental collapse.

Fact is, there are new coal-fired power plants being built right now in Mindanao, some are already in, while others are in the pipeline.

Given this development, these plants would definitely translate into additional capacities the island would need to meet its growing demand in the next five years and beyond. But in this case, Mindanao consumers would have to pay the price of development:  toxic emissions and greenhouse gases.

Having said that, we would like to invite the President to take a pause and  think for a moment. Do we really need coal-fired  power plants for Mindanao?

So far, we are not happy with the reported collision course between Environment Secretary Gina Lopez and Cusi. The new Energy Secretary is for the use of coal while Lopez, a staunch advocate of clean energy, is completely against the presence of coal-fired power plants in Mindanao.

Cusi’s plan to personally discuss with Lopez about coming up with a healthy balance of coal and renewable power plants is a welcome development.

We in the Movement for a Blackout-free Mindanao, as volunteer watchdogs for the efficient and uninterrupted delivery of electricity in Mindanao,  support this move conditionally.

It takes two to tango and therefore, a win-win solution is what it takes to strike a sustainable, efficient and environment-driven power supply for Mindanao.

Lopez and Cusi must  help one another find the right  solution to Mindanao’s power woes–a long, overdue problem that has been taking a heavy toll for the millions of electric consumers in our beloved island.

By now, we don’t know yet the details of the future power program for Mindanao under the Duterte administration. Maybe we need first to put more teeth in addressing the most pressing concern and that is the unstable power mix triggered by the unending sabotage of power lines.

The previous administration has been working on a 30-30-30 fuel mix goal to reduce the country’s coal dependence. The remaining 10 percent comes from oil-based power plants.

The country’s energy policy is primarily focused on sourcing out about  30 percent of its energy requirements from coal, 30 percent  from renewable energy, and another 30 percent from natural gas.

According to energy experts, coal has proven to be more dependable and reliable source for caseload than renewables, and therefore to work for  just one single source of power is not ideal nor commendable per se.

Energy sources have revealed that 70 percent of the 5,000 megawatts (mw) of power-generating capacity that are being built and will be built until 2020 are coal-based.

To date, some 20 coal-fired power plants are operating in the country today. Yet, some of the developed countries are slowly getting rid of the use of coal.

Environmentalists like Lopez have openly opposed the use of coal, it being tagged as “dirty energy” because of its toxic emissions.

The use of fossil fuels like coal as an energy source is the number one driver of global warming being a top emitter of greenhouse gases.

Lopez is a vocal critic of the country’s use of fossil fuels as energy sources. She has been long campaigning against coal mining, advocating instead that eco-tourism be used to boost local economies.

We are all aware that the cheapest of all fossil fuels is natural gas, and this kind of power source is aplenty elsewhere in the country. Why have we not tapped fully the geothermal sources of electric power?

Mindanoans deserve the full attention of the government, not because we have now a bisdak President but because we were victims of Imperial Manila’s second class treatment in the past.

(Ruffy Magbanua is chair of the Movement for a Blackout-free Mindanao, a volunteer watchdog for the efficient and uninterrupted delivery of power supply in Mindanao. E-mail: ruffy44_ph2000@yahoo.com).