Renewed energy

Our country is blessed with free and limitless energy from the sun, wind, water, and geothermal. Not all countries are as blessed as we are here in the Philippines. While we have such rich sources of renewable energy (RE), our country has been largely dependent on fossil fuel that runs our power plants to supply us with electricity.

Thus, it was a pleasant surprise to see last Monday President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III lead the ceremonial switch-on of the solar-powered rooftop in one of the country’s largest chains of malls. President Aquino joined SM Prime Holdings president Hans Sy in turning on 1.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity now supplied at the SM City North EDSA in Quezon City.

According to their official press release, SM Prime Holdings Inc. worked with Solar Philippines in the installation of 5,760 solar panels and 60 inverters for the project. The solar-powered rooftop is capable of generating 1.5-MWs of solar energy, more than enough to cover five percent of the mall’s average electric consumption per day. SM disclosed the power facility would light up 16,000 lighting fixtures and run 59 escalators and 20 elevators at the mall.

What makes this news more interesting is that Solar Philippines – the company behind the largest commercial rooftop solar power projects in the country – is headed by Lean Leviste. Leviste used to write for The Young Star section of our newspaper and is the younger of two sons of Sen. Loren Legarda, herself an advocate of climate and disaster risk reduction. This is somehow linked to environment-friendly energy sources like solar power that the young Leviste’s company is engaged in.

Leviste admitted the use of solar power has gained the reputation of being expensive “not because of the technology, but because previous efforts were too small to benefit from economies of scale.”  However, his company’s building the country’s largest solar power projects like their latest in SM malls will help dispel this mistaken notion because such economies of scale make solar power cost-competitive with power plants run by expensive imported fossil fuel.

Now 21, the young Leviste has come a long way. The last time I saw him was in Beijing a few years ago while he was still a teenage student. He was with his teachers and classmates on an educational tour in China when our group of Philippine media – invited by the Chinese foreign ministry – ran into them at the Beijing airport going back to Manila.

During those years, China was in the early stages of tapping solar and wind energy sources. Early on, the Chinese people were complaining about smog and heavy air pollution, especially those living in Beijing due to use of coal-fired plants. 

In fact, before the 2008 Summer Olympics in China started, all coal plants were shut down to clear the air over Beijing where most of the sports competitions were held. The same thing was done months before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing two weeks ago.

China has been gradually weaning itself away from carbon emissions produced by their coal-fired plants. While we were invited anew in the economic, political and cultural tour of southwestern China, we saw much progress made in their combined use of solar and wind power. I even took a photo of their streetlights supplied by both solar and wind power.

More RE plants are good for the country as this helps in developing our own indigenous sources of energy. The China model gives us some degree of confidence that we, too, can be energy independent someday. In addition, RE lessens our oil importations and saves us precious foreign exchange.

Power plants run by RE allow the displacement of other more polluting sources of electricity such as coal and oil. This in effect lessens the carbon emissions otherwise emitted by these plants. According to news reports, the recently commissioned 150-MW Burgos wind farm of the Energy Development Corp.(EDC), a unit of First Gen, will be able to displace approximately 200,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.

Last week, Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. led the inauguration of a $220-million, 81-megawatt wind farm in Caparispisan, Ilocos Norte. The wind farm is the pioneer project of North Luzon Renewable Energy Corp. (NLREC), a joint venture of Ayala Corp.’s AC Energy Holdings Inc., Philippine Investment Alliance for Infrastructure and the UPC Philippines Wind Holdco. All 27 turbines – each turbine has a 3-MW capacity – are fully operational since Nov. 11 and now on stream in the Luzon grid.

The Caparispisan wind farm is the third to be built in Ilocos Norte. The first was built by Northwind Power Development Corp. in Bangui town, and the second by EDC in Burgos.

While there is not much data on the effect of RE on health, the use of renewable energy undoubtedly helps in improving the quality of air that we breathe. More RE, less pollutant plants, are needed to be built to meet increased power demand.

And more important is the fact that renewable energy plants could help temper prices in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) as more expensive plants like diesel are pushed out. This is because RE prices are not subject to the volatility of the market unlike fossil fuels (crude oil). 
 Like other countries, a Feed in Tariff or (FIT) system is being used to encourage more renewable energy plants to be built in the Philippines. The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has recently approved a P0.04/kwh FIT Allowance. For a few centavos more, it will help improve or at least, stop the worsening of air quality which has led to different respiratory ailments like asthma for those of us living in the metropolis.

Initially, the use of RE to run our power plants may come as expensive but in the long-run will become cheaper for us.

If the Philippine government continues to develop our RE industry, our country might eventually become the leader in the region. To date, we are one of the leaders in Southeast Asia in wind farms. As the solar industry is becoming more popular, we are also a major geothermal power producer in the world.

If we continue in this direction, a new RE industry will emerge in the Philippines. This means more new jobs will be generated to meet the demand for this new industry. That’s why P-Noy’s renewed energy on RE is a good signal indeed.