COAL IS EXPENSIVE.

August 14, 2010

Press Statement

COAL IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE.

Vince Cinches
Coordinator, Visayas Climate Action Network
Executive Director
FIDEC Inc.

The governor may have been ill-informed when she said that renewable energy may be costly for ordinary household-level electricity consumers. This may be true years ago when a law-governing investment and development in the RE sector is nowhere to be found.

On the contrary, a 10-year sustainable energy roadmap of WWF-Philippines showed that if we shift to tapping renewable resources will result in lower power costs in the long term and will save the country a whooping $2.3B dollars annually, a savings that would mean a lot in providing social services, such as health and education, and not for posters of politicians plastered in government projects.

It is expected that the cost of oil and coal will go up in the coming years by as much as 64% while costs for RE technology will go down as it matures.

High costs in terms of taxes, tariffs, VAT, import duties among other things in operating renewable sources of energy is a thing of the past.

The Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the Philippine Renewable Energy Act or Republic Act No. 9513 signed into law last December, is aimed at accelerating the development and use of the nation’s vast renewable energy resources through fiscal and non-fiscal incentives for investors, among which are:

• Seven-year income tax holidays for RE developers
• Exemption from VAT and duty-free importation of equipment and machinery
• Reduction of corporate income tax after the expiry of the income tax holiday, to 10 percent of net income
• Zero percent VAT rate for the sale of power from RE
• Duty-free importation of equipment
• Tax credit on domestic capital equipment and services
• Special realty tax rates, income tax holidays, net operating loss carry-over, accelerated depreciation and exemption from the universal charge and wheeling charges.
• Exemption from all taxes of the proceeds from the sale of carbon credits.
• Assurance to investors in wind, solar, ocean, run-of-river hydropower and biomass in electricity generated from these clean sources through feed-in tariffs.

The current bias of the provincial government towards coal is a violation of such law, it provides that we need to allocate a certain portion from clean, home-grown renewable energy sources, Cebu have vast renewable energy potential specifically in HYDRO POWER for Argao and Ginatilan, WIND POWER for Carmen and Oslob(wind park), BIOMASS for Bogo, and Solar everywhere. The DOE has revealed that the country’s renewable energy potential is vast – with 4,531 MW from geothermal; 13,097 MW from hydropower, 277 MBFOE from biomass; 5.0-5.1 kWh/m2/day from solar; 76,600 MW from wind; and 170,000 MW from oceanic waves.

The provincial government should look into the sustainable opportunity that we are offering and should not be antagonistic in their stance just because we don’t agree with their development paradigm. They should open their eyes and look at the valid merits of our objectives.

It is our duty as taxpayers and stakeholders to correct governmental policies that we deemed unsustainable and wrong. This is governance, and they should now do their part.

The current market price of electricity in the province is already expensive as it is: in fact we rank next to Japan. The government’s power development plan will cost consumers more. Nationwide it is going to cost us an extra $4.7B, because of over capacity due to flaws in demand projections. Their basic overly optimistic assumption is that GDP will grow by 5.7 % each year, however National Statistical Coordination Board says that annual average growth is on the average of 3.6 percent. This is what happened when agencies refused to include other stakeholders in developing energy needs.

We know that having no electricity is going to be bad for the economy, the same thing as having too much will result to high rates due to Purchased Power Adjustments. In the end this will punish the common household-level electricity consumers, by paying for the excess energy. We have an installed capacity of almost 16,000 MW and a peak demand of 9,069 mw, so technically we are paying for both actual consumption and for unutilized energy.

On the other hand the market price of coal is only half the story, if we are going to include “external costs”. In terms of carbon emission budget / climate change, mining, combustion, waste disposal, environment, human health, food security, contamination of water supplies, heavy metals, coal now becomes the most expensive energy source, one that we pay with our lives and with the very fabric of our existence.

The baliligate was due to greed and poor value judgement, we have seen how it causes misery, how it divested the people with 100 million of taxpayers’ money. We don’t want it to happen again.

We have an option, and one that is without coal in it.##



Sources Philippine Electricity Demand Projections, by Maitet Diokno-pascual
True Cost of Coal – Greenpeace International

Ecogov releases book on reef management

Ecogov releases book on reef management


By Charmaine Y. Rodriguez

TO enable fisherfolk to see value in coastal resource management, a project has published a guidebook on community reef monitoring.

The second edition of the “Coral Reef Monitoring for Management” was launched recently by the Philippine Environmental Governance Project (EcoGov2), the Fisheries Improved for Sustainable Harvest Project (Fish) and the authors, represented by Dr. Porfirio Aliño, a professor of the Marine Science Institute of the University of the Philippines.

“We hope to launch a thousand miracles of MPAs (marine protected areas),” Aliño said during the launch of the guidebook at the Parklane International Hotel.

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The other authors are Andre Uychiaoco, Stuart Green, Margarita dela Cruz, Paulyn Gaite, Hazel Arceo and Alan White.

William Jatulan, deputy chief of party of Fish, said the second edition was released due to the clamor for an improved management of coral reefs and marine protected areas MPAs in general.

“(I hope) this will be useful to other partners in establishing MPAs,” Jatulan said.

Arunkumar Abraham, EcoGov2 chief of party, said copies of the guidebook will be distributed to local government units.

Jatulan said a copy can also be downloaded from www.oneocean.org.ph.

Abraham said the guidebook aims to promote a participatory or community-level approach in coral reef management by simplifying highly technical information.

It is also a practical tool to use since it advocates a step-by-step process in management.

The publication is also supported by a range of articles and position papers and is produced by the “best and the brightest” in the Philippines.

It is also significant since the country is the leader in the Coral Triangle.

According to the World Wildlife Fund website, the Coral Triangle covers nearly 2.3 million square miles of ocean across all, or parts of, the seas of six countries in the Indo-Pacific—Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.

“This vast area of the Indo-Pacific region harbors 75 percent of all known coral species, more than half of the world’s reefs, 40 percent of the world's coral reef fish species, and six of the world’s seven species of marine turtle,” it added.

Anabelle Trinidad, Conservation International’s representative to the Coral Triangle Support Program, said the guidebook is “relevant and timely.”

The publication is supported by The United States Agency for International Development, EcoGov2, Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and Department of Environment and Natural Resources through the Fish Project and the Coastal Resource Management Project-Philippines.


Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on July 4, 2010.

NEW OIL SURVEY OPPOSED

NEW OIL SURVEY OPPOSED 3/13


Fisherfolk fear effect of seismic survey in Cebu, Leyte, Bohol waters
By Ma. Bernadette A. Parco, Senior Editorial Assistant





Her family relies on three kilos of fish that her husband would catch on a good day.
If they don’t have food on the table, they sell the day's catch for P120 per kilo to buy what they need, said Elisa Bransuela, 43, of Borbon town, northern Cebu.
“Pamugas ra ning amo (We use the money to buy rice),” she said.
Her husband, Gomersindo, traveled 83 kilometers to Cebu City yesterday to join other leaders of Borbon fisherfolk groups to oppose a seismic survey that will be conducted this month by NorAsian Energy Limited.
At a press conference, Gomersindo said he fears the survey would distrub the sea and affect his only source of livelihood.
When NorAsian did a similar sea survey in the west coast of Cebu in 2008, fisherfolk groups also complained that their fish catch dropped and fish pens were destroyed.
The Department of Energy (DOE) assured yesterday that the survey, which uses sound waves to check for possible oil and gas reserves under the sea, will not harm the fish, whales or dolphins.
A Chinese vessel, the BGP Challenger, will cover a total of 100 line kilometers in Borbon waters or at a distance of at least 2 kilometers from the town’s shoreline.
The survey period in Borbon will “take only a total of about 15 hours” over two to three days.
But the total coverage of the seismic survey is two offshore sites in waters off Cebu, Leyte and Bohol starting the first week of March.
The survey, which will take two weeks in all, was approved by the Department of Energy under Petroleum Service Contract No. 69 awarded in 2008.
Gomersindo, who heads the Magay Fishermen's Association, signed a letter addressed to the local executives of Bohol, Tacloban City in Leyte, Maasin City in Southern Leyte and Cebu, asking them to oppose the proposed seismic survey and exploration activities at the Camotes and Bohol Seas.
He was joined by other leaders of fishermen's association and environmental lawyers in Cebu City.
“As citizens and stakeholders of the Philippines and the provinces, cities and municipalities of Cebu, Bohol, Leyte and Southern Leyte, we are outraged at the gross, willful and continuing defiance and violation of our Constitution, various laws, Supreme Court rulings on the environment and governance, international conventions and the people's rights to life health and a healthy environment,” the group said in the letter dated March 4, 2010.
This would be the second attempt by NorAsian Energy Limited, an Australian offshore mining company, to conduct a sea exploration for possible gas and oil deposits.
The present plan involves a wider range.
In 2008, NorAsian planned to explore natural reserves at least seven km off the coastlines of Langtad, Argao in western Cebu.
Argao fisherfolk opposed the activity and reported a decrease in fish yield due to the oil exploration activities of NorAsian Energy Ltd. at the Cebu-Bohol Strait.
For the current activity in the Camotes sea, the scope of the survey reaches about 900-line kilometers.
This raised fears that it would have adverse effects on the Danajon Bank, which is a rare double barrier reef off northern Bohol.The reef is one of only three such sites in the Indo-Pacific area.
The protest petition was signed by environmental lawyer Gloria Estenzo-Ramos, who cited the Fisheries Code of the Philippines that “implements this constitutional mandate by ensuring that the municipal waters are for the preferential use of subsistence fisherfolk, excluding commercial fishing vessels therefrom.”
The group also noted that the same law states that “No person, natural or judicial, shall undertake any development project without first securing an Environmental Compliance Certificate from the Secretary of the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources).”
The project violates the preferential right of small fisherfolk as the marine resources in intertidal areas or shallow waters are affected.
“Do we sacrifice the marine ecosystem for a small amount of oil?” asked lawyer Benjamin Cabrido.
A DOE bulletin about the project said no ECC is needed for the sea survey at this stage. The environment department will require one only when there is commercial production of offshore oil and gas.
Antonio Labios, DOE regional director for the Visayas, said he met with members of the Fisheries Improved for Sustainable Harvest (FISH project), which is one of non-government agencies involved with towns within the Danajon Reef.
“They (FISH project) requested for an orientation from our team. We spent four hours explaining, the group was composed of experts, marine biologists,” Labios said.
“Sa among understanding nakasabot sila (We believe they understood the exploration activity),” he added.
Labios also said DOE consulted the officials and residents of Borbon town in four visits and orientation sessions.
“We assured them that there are measures undertaken. The EMB has issued a CNC, that means we are complying with EMB on the Environmental Impact Assessment law,” he said.
“On the safety of mariners, all the ships that would pass through the (seismic survey site) will see notices. On the socio-economic aspect, the fishermen will be compensated for the payaws (fishpens) in the site,” he added.
Labios said payaws that will be compensated must be certified by the municipal agricultural and fisheries office.
“We excluded marine protected areas from the survey. This is also not the first time we conducted a seismic survey along the Camotes and Bohol Seas. So far, based on our presentation, there is no effect (on the marine resources),” he said.
He said marine mammal scientists from Australia will be present during the activity.
“The sound frequency is between 230 and 260 only, which is equivalent to 170 decibels to 270 decibels. The sound of the fast craft is stronger (than the seismic waves),” said Labios.
“The boat can stay in an area for seven hours, but the seismic survey is only for 2.5 hours,” he said.
Vince Cinches, Central Visayas Fisherfolk Development Center Inc. executive director, said they conducted a study of the fish yield in Bohol following the seismic survey conducted by then Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., Ltd. (Japex) in 2007.
He said the study showed that fish yield dropped from six to 11 kilos to zero to 2.5 kilos.
In May 2008, Japex announced that decided to relinquish its service contract effective June 20, 2009 “because of the lack of commercial oil and gas discovery as a result of exploration work including drilling of one exploration well.”
Environment groups filed went to court on behalf of the resident mammals of the Tañon Strait in what was described as a landmark case. They argued that the oil drilling would harm whales, dolphins, porpoises and other cetaceans that populate the Tañon Strait protected seascape between Negros and Cebu islands.