Subic folk: Coal is wrong solution

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—A group opposing a proposed coal-fired power plant in Subic on Thursday took a swipe at some Cabinet officials who had described the project as a solution to the looming power crisis in the country.

Former Environment Undersecretary Gregorio Magdaraog, coconvenor of Subic Anticoal Coalition, said Cabinet officials should be pushing for “better power plants” instead of pressing for the construction of a

600-megawatt coal-fired power project inside this free port.

“They (Cabinet officials) should not insist on [constructing] coal-fired power plants. Is this the right solution?” Magdaraog told the Inquirer.

Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima on Wednesday said the country would not have to face a potential power shortage had the Supreme Court not issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the

$1.28-billion coal power plant project of Redondo Peninsula Energy (RP Energy) Inc.

RP Energy is a consortium of energy firms composed of Manila Electric Co., Aboitiz Power and Taiwan Cogeneration Corp. Mt. Redondo in Subic, Zambales province, is the proposed location of the planned plant.

“Had the Supreme Court not TRO-ed the Redondo power plant, which would have been on-stream, we wouldn’t even be facing this issue,” Purisima told reporters in Manila. He made the remarks during a briefing on the proposed 2015 national budget.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said he also believed that the RP Energy power plant could provide a remedy to the looming crisis in power.

“If that project gets on-stream, [we would not be] talking about a possible crisis here. The issuance of a writ of kalikasan stops us from developing a remedy that should have answered the potential crisis in power supply,” Abad told reporters after the budget hearing.

Magdaraog, who is also president of Subic Bay Freeport Chamber for Health and Environment Conservation, said a coal-fired power plant was an “old concept” of addressing the energy crisis and that the government should be exploring other alternatives, such as natural gas, solar and wind power energy.

“Let’s consider options that are not destructive to our environment,” he said.

Jen Velarmino-van der Heijde, an anticoal-fired power plant activist and Subic resident, said Cabinet officials should “get their facts straight before they make such pronouncements.”

“The high court didn’t hear the writ of kalikasan case filed by Subic Bay Freeport stakeholders. We filed it in [the Supreme Court] but it was passed to the Court of Appeals for hearing and decision,” Van der Heijde said in a text message.

She said no writ of kalikasan had been issued since “there wasn’t a plant to speak of in the first place.”

She said the appellate court granted their request for a temporary environment protection order and eventually ruled in their favor, which stopped the project. Allan Macatuno, Inquirer Central Luzon