New energy model

Mindanao, the Philippines’ second largest island group still reeled from a power crisis when residents of the Visayas learned that President Benigno Aquino III is reviewing power rate hike proposals submitted by the National Power Corp.

The business community in Cebu led by Prudencio Gesta, president of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry are not happy with this development that will make investing in the Visayas more costly.

Few businesses will really benefit from greater overhead costs and the ramifications of pricier power go beyond the trader to each person who lives in a country that grievously suffers the consequences of global warming.

The government and businessmen can no longer isolate their plans to meet the country’s demand for energy from the broader framework of sustainable development.

Simply privatizing power sources and increasing the number of players in the energy industry has not driven down the price of electricity nor ended the era of brownouts as these actions promised in theory to do.

Stack that with the unreliable fluctuations in the price of imported oil (generally more expensive over time) and no one will contest that those responsble need to further rev up the search for and distribution of renewable and cheaper sources of power.

In the last decade, nearly 4,000 residents in the islet barangay of Pangan-an, part of Olango Island in Lapu-Lapu City, benefited from a solar facility until its cells expired.

Last March, Bogo City in Cebu’s far north inaugurated the La Libertad Natural Gas Power Plant that now supplies electricity enough for 500 homes a day.

The Inayawan Sanitary Landfill in Cebu City has been registered as a project with the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. The goal is to source energy from biogas produced by trash decaying in the landfill.

In Manila, the Department of Public Works and Highways is working to mainstream the use of jeeps fueled by alternative energy.

Surely these glimmers of a future where energy is low-cost and minimally damaging if at all to Mother Earth should appeal with greater urgency to the hearts and minds of the government and investors.

Insisting on the usual oil-driven and mere profit-oriented model of bringing power to the people will only lead in the long run to our economic and ecological undoing.