Editorial: Sugar industry - Key to energy self-sufficiency

Sunstar Bacolod

GOVERNOR Alfredo Marañon Jr.'s statement ruling out a nuclear power plant for Negros is commendable. As the Japan experience shows us, no extent of scientific technology nor human preparation can withstand the force of nature.

A nuclear power plant takes ten years to build. Its nuclear waste takes hundreds of lifetimes to render safe. Its constant threat of radioactive leakage takes away our unworried sleep.

Coal-fired power plants might appear less dangerous but they also have biological hazards which raise the hackles of environmental activists. Aside from disposal of its waste products, the coal fired power plants pose problems on the noxious fumes which the residents near the Iloilo plant complained about as well as the fine soot particles which residents of Naga City, Cebu complained about just recently.

Bunker fuel fired power plants then? With the unmitigated increases in the price of oil products due to the political upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, this might not exactly be an attractive proposal.

Biomass power plants? Why not?

The sugar mills all over the province are all equipped with power-generating capabilities. Once their boilers are fired up at the start of the milling season, the mills produce their own electricity for their operations. They have excess power to supply to the grid while they are milling.

Government should tap the power generating capacities of the sugar mills. It should provide financing for the modernization of their boilers so that they can produce more electricity than they presently do from the same volume of bagasse.

During the off-milling season, the mills can continue with their power generation using wood chips from tree farms as fuel. They can also utilize dried coconut husks, corn cobs, palay husks and other similar 'waste' materials.

The sugar industry in the province is in the position and has the potential to help secure our energy self-sufficiency. Government should not look far for the solution to its power needs.

Published in the Sun.Star Bacolod newspaper on March 17, 2011.