By Lenie Lectura - November 5, 2019
THE Power for People Coalition (P4P)
on Monday expressed support for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) call for
Meralco to change its rules to give more flexibility for power suppliers
bidding for its energy needs.
“We welcome the announcement of
[Energy] Secretary [Alfonso] Cusi calling on Meralco to change its terms of
reference for its competitive selection process [CSP]. However, we are not
happy that the changes he asks for will just allow more coal-fired power plants
to participate, instead of taking the opportunity to obey President Duterte’s
directive to have more renewable sources available to Filipinos,” said P4P
Convenor Gerry Arances.
Meralco is asking for bids for 1,200
megawatts of supply but specified that the electricity must come from the
controversial “high-efficiency, low-emissions” (HELE) technology.
Under the terms, Meralco wants the
generation companies to bid for the whole supply requirement using plants with
high-efficiency, low-emission technology, while Cusi wants any plant to be able
to sell only part of its capacity so that they can sell the surplus on the open
market.
“Meralco’s arcane CSP rules are
problematic on many different levels. Unfortunately, Secretary Cusi focused
only on the aspects of the rules which are of concern to big investors and not
those of concern to ordinary people. Even if the DOE’s changes are adopted,
electricity will not be affordable, reliable, and sustainable, as what
President Duterte wants,” said Arances.
Green energy groups, led by
the P4P, are against coal, including the “clean coal” technology.
“There is nothing clean about
coal. What the so-called clean coal does is simply to change what part of the
Earth it’s polluting. Instead of the air, it will pollute our ground and
waters,” said Arances.
Cusi said he needs to verify what
Meralco meant while commenting that he was surprised with Meralco’s
position on the CSP.
“I don’t like to say anything until
I validate what they really meant. I was surprised to hear it from the news, so
I need to validate,” he said.
“We encountered a problem in the CSP
in 2016. So we have to untangle all those problems. Now that CSP has resumed,
we want it to be really a competitive selection. I don’t like to tweak it to
favor anybody. So all plants should be able to participate to get the best price.
That’s the objective of the CSP: build capacity, promote competition,” Cusi
added.
Meralco wants to conduct a
second round of its CSP for 1,200 MW greenfield capacity with relaxed rules. It
was, however, not in favor of some of the concerns raised by the DOE regarding
changing the terms of reference (TOR) of the competitive bidding.
No comments:
Post a Comment