Power situation worries Cebu guv

Sunstar Cebu

CEBU CITY -- As Metro Cebu continues to suffer from frequent outages, Governor Gwendolyn Garcia is seriously considering the operation of two coal-fired power plants despite protests from an environmentalist group.

That, as the Department of Energy (DOE) is working on having the power supply normalize by next week with a private firm generating more power.

Also, DOE Visayas Director Antonio Labios said he and officers of the Commission on Election will meet with power suppliers Friday to map out stopgaps during the synchronized barangay and youth elections on Oct. 25.

Labios met Thursday with officials of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), Cebu Energy Development Corp. (CEDC) and Visayan Electric Company (Veco) to assess the power situation.

The brownouts have been triggered by a shortage of power when an NGCP transmission line bogged down last Oct. 5 and CEDC had to shut down two of its plants for maintenance.

The two CEDC plants can each produce 82 megawatts.

Because of the short supply, Veco has been rationalizing the use of power by its consumers and has been rotating brownouts at two hours per feeder.

At the Capitol, Governor Garcia said the operation of coal-fired power plants would be a better alternative to power rotation due to lack of supply.

She said environmentalists keep on harping on the dangers of coal-fired power plants and block moves to operate them but they’re not coming up with ways to improve the current power situation.

The brownouts are not helping Cebu’s economy, she said. Her support for the operation of coal-fired plants is for the good of Cebu and not for any power company.

“It is urgent that additional power be provided to the grid that is why we are pushing for these two power plants to be fully operational in spite of all the noise and fury raised by certain people. I would just wish to ask them now: Do they have a solution to this? Shall we start setting up wind vanes, which, by the way, would cost us billions of pesos?” she said in a press conference.

She again said that Capitol is open to using nuclear energy, which she said is the safest form of energy.

In the Philippine-Russia Business Forum to be held in Cebu later this month, a company involved in the production of nuclear power plants will be joining the Russians.

Their presence in Cebu, the governor said, shows their openness to and interest in Cebu as a potential buyer of nuclear energy.

“I advice Governor Garcia to read the law, the Constitution. It is a great abuse of dissention of DOE that since 1992 they should have shifted to the use of indigenous sources of energy,” environmental lawyer Gloria Estenzo-Ramos said.

“We encourage investors with the renewable energy law, which offers incentives.
We can’t wait for the government to act on this,” she said.

She added the government can invest in renewable energy like wind, solar and geothermal sources.

Environmentalists contend that fossil fuel burning contributes to global warming or climate change that result to sea level rise and storm surges.

Ramos, co-founder of Philippine Earth Justice Center Inc. and a member of Global
Legal Action on Climate Change, is one of the plaintiffs who filed a environmental protection order suit against the DOE, Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Provincial Government among others.

“It is plain and simple childish for the governor to shift the blame (on
brownouts) on environment advocates,” Ramos said.

Effects

On the peace and order front, patrol cars of the Mobile Patrol Group roam the streets during brownouts, said Supt. Pablo Labra II, Cebu City Police Office deputy chief for operations.

There has been no surge in the number of petty crimes in Cebu City since the brownouts began anew, Labra said.

Only clerical work has been affected, he said.

At the Cebu International Port, loading and unloading of cargo are stopped because the power available would not be enough to run the cranes simultaneously, Cebu Port Authority General Manager Vicente Suazo Jr. said.

At the Bureau of Internal Revenue, business transactions are hampered.
But Farmers Development Center executive director Estrella Cararata said occasional brownouts “are fine” because “we can reduce consumption of electricity thereby reducing carbon emission, which destroys the ozone layers that protect the earth from the heat of the sun.”

Farmers can go about with their daily lives with little need for electricity, Cararata said.(EOB/RSA/BAP/JTG/Sun.Star Cebu)

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on October 08, 2010.