ILOILO CITY – The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has granted an environment certificate of compliance (ECC) to a coal plant project at the heart of Iloilo City that the Church and environmental groups have opposed.

Environment Secretary Joselito Atienza, former Manila mayor and staunch defender of President Macapagal-Arroyo, said he issued the ECC last week after concluding studies on the safety of the coal plant and after hearing the positions of those opposing and supporting it.

“We issued the ECC for the benefit of Iloilo residents who want additional sources of power,” Atienza told the Inquirer in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

He said based on DENR studies, he was assured by the project’s proponents that the coal plant will use “clean technology” and will be “pollution-free.”

Atienza said technical experts of the DENR went to Taiwan to check coal plants there, which were used by the proponents as a model for their project.

Citing studies, Atienza said the coal plant would also result in lower electricity rates for Iloilo, which has one of the highest rates at present.

The Panay Power Corp. (PPC) and a Metrobank subsidiary, Global Business Power Corp. (GBPC), plan to build a 164-megawatt coal plant inside a 40-hectare property of the PPC in Barangay Ingore in Lapaz District here. The plant would be completed in 2010.

The project is among the measures being pushed to address a power shortage in Iloilo and Panay Island. Most local officials and business groups supported the project.

Last July, the DENR also issued an ECC to a 100-megawatt coal plant project in Barangay Nipa in Concepcion town, around 111 km north of Iloilo City. The David M. Consunji Inc. group would build the project.

The PPC welcomed the granting of the ECC, adding it will meet the target date of completion set in 2010 despite the delay in the ECC issuance.

In a telephone interview, PPC Public Relations Consultant Lemuel Fernandez said the PPC and the GBPC would abide by the conditions of the ECC, including the construction of a P10-million emission monitoring system.

Citing environmental and health risks, the Church, led by Jaro Archbishop and Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines president Angel Lagdameo, and environmental groups had opposed the project.

The critics urged government to tap renewable sources of energy and improve transmission lines in the Visayas grid as a way of addressing the growing demand for power.

The Madia-as Ecological Movement, the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) and the Greenpeace decried the granting of the ECC.

Bayan Panay spokesperson Edgar Pelayo noted that the government has remained “deaf and blind to the legitimate concerns raised” against the project.

Madia-as coordinator Ma. Geobelyn Lopez said the DENR ignored studies that showed coal plants could have long-term harmful effects on communities that host the plants.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaign manager Beau Baconguis, in a statement, said that in issuing the ECC, Atienza “has revealed his monumental hypocrisy, pretending to talk about climate change” while approving coal plant projects.