Appreciating Mother Nature

The observance of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are the only two official holidays in the Philippines that most of us employed in media entities get to enjoy two consecutive “no work” days in a year. Unfortunately, virus downed me in this year’s Holy Week break. So I spent these two days of vacation at home, or “staycation” as it is now popularly called.

Feeling well on the third day, I managed to cajole my doctor son to drive us to a road trip for a half-day tour outside Metro Manila. Moreover, it augurs well for such road trips with the absence of perennial traffic jams in Metro Manila during this long holiday period.

Since I have to report back to work on Black Saturday after lunch at the latest, we decided to travel to the town of Pililla in the province of Rizal. This was after seeing the Facebook account of my sister showing photos of their excursion at Pililla, with giant windmills in the background.

With huge wind turbines standing on top of this mountainous area, it is no surprise that it is fast turning into a popular destination for local tourists.

So off we motored very early morning to Pililla, thinking the head start would give us enough time to enjoy the sights along the way. As expected, traffic was very light, as many Metro Manila folks were mostly out of town also.

Little did we realize, traffic gridlocks would hit us as soon as we reached the city of Antipolo. The Antipolo Church is one of the favorite pilgrim sites during Holy Week, that’s why.

And traffic slows down as we get near any market or church areas along the towns of Baras, Morong, Tanay until we finally reached Pililla.

With cemented roads, it was easy for vehicles and even motorbikes to reach the highest spot where the wind farm is.

Located on a 60-hectare land in Barangay Halayhayin, the wind towers are visible on a clear day from Antipolo and from Laguna across the Laguna Lake. From where we stood, we could see the landscape and Metro Manila’s skyscrapers.

Touring the area is also a learning experience for people who go there, especially for children. There are even picnic grounds for visitors. There are small stores selling refreshments and snacks and souvenirs of windmill magnets and desk decors.

It is a good thing that the wind farm operator – the Alternergy Wind One Corporation (AWOC) allows free entry in the wind farm. But since it is a power-generating site, security guards are visible all over the place.

From the reception gallery, we read that AWOC is headed by former Energy Secretary Vicente Perez Jr. as president and chairman. The Pililla Rizal Wind Power Project is the second wind project jointly developed by Pérez and his team who pioneered the development of Bangui Bay Wind Farm in Ilocos Norte, the first wind power plant in Southeast Asia.

At the reception area, visitors are given a crash course on how the wind farm operates and basic information such as:

• The Pililla Rizal Wind Farm achieved successful completion last June 2015, without any grid constraint or congestion to Metro Manila, the main power load in Luzon.

• Each wind tower can generate 2 megawatts (MW) of wind power, for a total of 54-MW capable to supply the electricity requirements of 66,000 households, including those living in nearby areas in Metro Manila.

• Each of the 27 wind towers is 125 meters tall or equivalent to a 33-storey building.

• Connected to the 10-kilometer line to distribution network of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), it is now supplying clean electricity to Metro Manila and Rizal.

• The Pililla Rizal Wind Farm has also recently secured the Certificate of Compliance (COC) under the Feed-in-Tariff.

Each tower was supplied by GAMESA of Pamplona, Spain where we had the opportunity to visit its manufacturing plant about four years ago. We went there as participant to a renewable energy (RE) educational tour for media.

Other than hydropower, geo-thermal and solar energy among RE power plants we have here, the Philippines is the first country among the ten-member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to develop grid wind power since 2005.

One of the largest RE companies in the Philippines is the Energy Development Corp. (EDC). A subsidiary company of the Lopez-owned First Gen, the EDC operates more than 1,188-MW of geothermal; 132-MW of hydro; 150-MW of wind and 4-MW of solar spread from Ilocos, Nueva Ecija, Sorsogon, Leyte, Negros and Mt. Apo in Mindanao.

These are RE generating plants that hew closely to the use of so-called “green” or clean energy sources instead of fossil fuel and coal-fired plants classified as heavy carbon emitters that contribute to global warming and climate change.

For its environment-friendly power generating plants, First Gen chairman and chief executive officer Federico “Piki” Lopez was invited to speak in one of the Climate Change Project breakout sessions with former US Vice President Al Gore held most recently here in Manila. “Many of our energy facilities are located alongside lush beautiful watershed areas that are home to so many amazing flora and fauna that’s practically a showcase of our country’s bio-diversity, one of the richest in the world,” Lopez cited in his speech.

This is why, Lopez said, the EDC entered into partnership with the University of the Philippines Institute of Biology (UPIB) to study the biodiversity around all its energy facilities to better understand the ecosystem and how best to protect the area through such programs as reforestation.

In the course of reforestation of more than 10,000 hectares of lands with 6.5 million trees since 2008, Lopez said the EDC came across many “incredible living things” within their concession areas – from the Philippine Eagle in Mt. Apo to tarsiers in Leyte, some species of Flying Foxes, and Wild Philippine Ducks, to name some.

And just recently, he added, the UPIB discovered in EDC hydropower plant in Pantabangan in Nueva Ecjia a new species of Rafflesia, named Rafflesia consuelloae which is now officially the world’s smallest and best smelling wild flower.

So whether it’s a wind farm or solar farm, one thing our RE operators must take into account is turning them also into a tourist destination freely available to people to appreciate Mother Nature.