Environmental groups call for democratized power development process

Environmental organizations advocating for renewable energy yesterday staged a silent protest while energy officials were discussing the energy situation and power development with the industry players and consumers at the Cebu Midtown Hotel.

Members of Cebu Alliance for Renewable Energy, Greenpeace, and their allied organizations carried placards demanding for a democratized power development process outside the function rooms where the activity was being held.

Vince Cinches, CARE-Toledo coordinator said the Department of Energy lack guidelines on how to implement the power development process and that consumers and civil society are excluded in the process.

"They (energy officials) should open up the power development process. They should not limit it only to the investors and electric cooperatives," he said.

The forum has actually two separate sessions, wherein session 1 was attended by investors, power producers and electric distributors while session 2 was participated by consumers and civil society. Different topics were also discussed in two sessions, which were conducted in separate rooms.

Cinches said that the DOE could have held the two sessions together to discuss the same topics and give all sectors a chance to participate in the energy planning process.

Citing the statement of National Transmission Corporation president Alan Ortiz, CARE said DOE bloated its facts when it claimed that without additional power capacity, the Visayas grid would experience a power shortage by 2008.

Ortiz said during the forum that with the recent energization of the Leyte Cebu Interconnection Uprating Project, the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid would have enough power supply even until 2012.

It was also declared that the national government has been gearing for privatization of 70 percent of the installed capacity of the National Power Corporation's generating assets in Luzon and Visayas this year including TRANSCO. By the second quarter of 2006, it would implement the Wholesale Electricity Spot market, which, energy officials said, would regulate the law of supply and demand in the power sector.

The energy department has been conducting public consultations and information campaigns in different areas of the country on power development and reforms for the formulation of its Regional Energy Plans that will give detailed information to them on the energy profile of each region. The REPs would be used as guides in making their decisions on what to do to answer demand for power and boost the regions' economic activities. - Wenna A. Berondo