‘No-coal scenario not possible right away’

By Lenie Lectura - September 24, 2019

https://businessmirror.com.ph/2019/09/24/no-coal-scenario-not-possible-right-away/

OFFICIALS of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) on Monday said the country’s reliance on coal, as energy source, will continue unless a cheaper and reliable replacement is assured.

“We cannot stop coal. You cannot just stop coal plants…okay, let’s stop coal but what do we replace it with? Renewable? It can’t be all RE [Renewable Energy], LNG (liquefied natural gas)? Then how do you deal with its price? And then by the way, LNG is fossil-based,” said Meralco President Ray Espinosa when asked if Meralco and its power generation arm, Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen), will stop utilizing coal.

Meralco, host for this year’s AESIEAP (Association of Electricity Supply Industry of East Asia and the Western Pacific), said it is doing its share to achieve the region’s goal to reduce carbon footprint to zero.

“We need to start working on an energy transition plan. That means we have to balance—it cannot be a no-coal immediately. The rest of the presentors were also saying the same things. And it depends on the reason. There is no one size fits all,” said MGen President Rogelio Singson during a press conference.

MGen is beefing up its power portfolio to 1,200 megawatts (MW).  At the same time, it is engaged in other coal power plant projects.

“In our minds, we have set an agenda whereby as we contract stable sources of power, our minds are actually focused on basically moving ourselves from a high carbon to low-carbon footprint, and hopefully to a zero-carbon electricity, which is tapping renewables. The issue in the Philippines is the abundance—whether it can actually substitute fully for fossil fuels. That’s a big question,” explained Singson.

Espinosa said the country could not survive on RE alone because the country’s power grid is not suited to handle RE alone. “It is not possible to be 100-percent renewable because, for one, the grid cannot handle it. And by the way, the grid has to change. Even if you have 100-percent renewable but the grid is still the same…our grid is not geared to that, so even the grid will have to undergo this transition,” he said.

Data from the Department of Energy show coal plants make up nearly 40 percent of the country’s over 21,000 MW of installed energy capacity. RE accounted for 32 percent, natural gas with 15 percent and oil-based plants with 13 percent.

“You cannot demonize coal because we have to also understand we want to fuel economic growth. The demand for power becomes higher when we are basically seeing high growths.

“You cannot stop that. But, at the same time, the other side of the equation is we have to provide electricity at affordable prices.”

Espinosa added, “by the way, it has to be reliable. If electricity is not reliable then it’s useless. If it’s not affordable then it’s not for the benefit of the public.”

That, he added, “is what we need to balance and to find the right equation is not very easy actually for us to do. Every country in the world is experiencing that problem and they have different ways of responding to it.”

AESIEAP, a regional organization of power industry players, concluded its CEO Conference 2019 with a definitive blueprint on how to best leverage prevailing energy policies and innovations that lead toward sustainable and inclusive economic development.

Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi delivered the special address on behalf of President Duterte. He said, “Despite racing to meet our current energy requirements, we always need to ensure that the decisions we make today will not endanger the ability of the coming generations to fulfill their own needs in the future. There must be strong synergy between the public and private sector to secure a progressive, inclusive and sustainable energy future.”

The conference also served as a venue for environmental sustainability and inclusive development advocacies in the power sector.

“This is a gathering of influential CEOs and government leaders who are in the position to come up with transition plans for the adoption of energy efficiency, renewable energy and information communication technologies. Renewable-energy penetration in the Philippines is at 32 percent,” said Singson, who is also AESIEAP secretary-general. “We hope that our government and power industry leaders were able to inspire our Asia-Pacific counterparts to seriously consider increasing their own respective countries’ renewable-energy capacities to ideal levels of around 30 percent.”