SBMA to weigh green benefits in projects

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Beset by community objections to a proposed coal-fired plant in the area, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) will now weigh the environmental benefits of future projects, with the help of various sectors, to preserve the free port’s tourism appeal, according to a top SBMA official.

SBMA Chair Roberto Garcia said the agency wanted to ensure that all future projects, which are classified as environmentally sensitive projects (ESPs), are “acceptable to various stakeholders.” ESPs are projects that may imperil the health of people or harm the environment.

Garcia did not mention a 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant being pushed by Malacañang when the Inquirer spoke to him last month.

In an earlier interview, the SBMA chair said the controversial power project would have to go through a similar social acceptability process.

Tourism locators, as well as the surrounding communities, have objected to the project of a consortium of energy firms led by Aboitiz Power, Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) and Taiwan Cogen Corp.

When he spoke to businessmen in Baguio City on August 19, Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said the proposed coal-fired plant may not be classified as clean energy, but the government had to make a hard economic decision to prevent power rates from increasing further.

If the project pushes through, it would be the first new plant to be installed under the Aquino administration and this would increase power supply by 2014, Almendras said.

“If the project does not proceed, we will have problems. Our energy consumption increases each year,” he said in Filipino.

“Right now, our priority is to bring down the cost, if not prevent the cost of electricity from going any higher because that is now an economic constraint… The reason why few foreign investors build industries in the Philippines… is because power is expensive in the [country],” he said.

Garcia said the SBMA was aware that the port’s environmental state of affairs “far exceeds the quality of the national average, and therefore the agency may issue stricter environmental standards to satisfy the interests of the stakeholders.”

He said the SBMA was mandated to protect, maintain, and develop the virgin forests into a national park by implementing the rules of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The SBMA will realize its environmental mandate by employing stricter standards for ESPs, he said.

Under the new green system, the SBMA Ecology Center will independently verify the natural resource impact and the quality of a set of mitigating measures of a proposed project that qualifies as an ESP.

Stakeholder groups, among them neighborhood or housing project representatives, freeport workers’ associations, and the indigenous Filipino tribal council, will be invited to public consultations on the ESPs. With a report from Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon