Fallacy about coal-fired power plants

FROM THE STANDS 
By Domini M. Torrevillas (The Philippine Star) | Updated February 18, 2014 - 12:00am

The Philippines, endowed with alternative sources of energy, is the second largest user of geothermal power, and has access to potential abundant powerful water energy, but coal-fired power plants account for more than 36 percent of carbon emissions in the country, Heherson Alvarez told representatives of 40 countries at the first ministerial session of the 14th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit in New Delhi, India, recently.

Alvarez, who heads the Philippine Climate Change Commission, said, “The economic fallacy about coal and petroleum-based energy as the cheapest in the market is the formidable economic and psychological barrier that blocks the accelerated development of renewable energy, not just in the Philippines, but all over the world.”

Policy makers “have the facile notion that carbon energy systems, like coal, are the easiest pathway towards energy growth and development. . . Coal and petroleum-based energy (should be) the cheapest in the market without the destructive externalities imputed into their cost.”

However, Alvarez said, “Coal and fossil fuels are heavily subsidized, and factoring in the externalities of pollution and climate change costs, these energy systems (are) the most costly and, at the same time, most destructive to the environment.”

Expanding coal use in all parts of the world will be very costly in terms of environmental ruin, reduction of water supply, and impairment of the food system.

The Philippines’ coal-fired plants is projected to grow to 86 percent in 2030, reducing alternative energy use from the current 6 to a mere 14 percent.

Alvarez was personally invited by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and director-general of the Energy and Resource Institute, organizer of the event.      

Alvarez said “technology and financial barriers to access alternative energy resources could be overcome through sustained efforts, with appropriate incentives, and with determined policy changes towards low carbon strategies in power generation.”

 “Our capacity, not only for sustainability but immediate survival, as a community is imperiled. If the ‘horserace’ between mitigation and adaptation, even if the world temperature is abated below that ‘point of no return,’ but if global heating is not abated soon enough, our country and many island communities may perish.

“We must be transparent and candid of the great burden of fossil fuel and its terrible externalities, and manage to reduce it so that rationally it may have its minimum use for our fuel mix and the transition to a cleaner, healthier, abundant safe energy future will be  achieved so that the earth will not burn beyond 2°C and will flourish and endure into eternity.”

Alvarez was personally invited to the conference by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental  Panel on Climate Change, and director-general of the Energy and Resource Institute, organizer of the event

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My email:dominitorrevillas@gmail.com

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