Government urged to increase renewable energy target

Continued reliance on coal energy for electricity would mean double punishment for the Philippines, as the country would have to pay not only for the cost of importing coal, but also for the consequences of burning coal, Greenpeace said.

Launching its report "Burning Our Future: The True Costs of Building Coal-Fired Power Plants and the Case for Renewable Energy Alternatives," Greenpeace called on the Philippine government to increase its renewable energy target by 10 percent by 2011 and reduce the volume of coal-fired power nationwide.

Greenpeace also demanded support for renewable energy, like solar and wind power and modern biomass, including preferential tax breaks and regulations to reflect the true cost of fossil-fuel electricity.

"Coal is expensive because it is imported. It is also a dirty energy. The burning of coal releases greenhouse gases that damage the climate. In comparison, the sun and the wind are free, they are found just about everywhere in the Philippines and they don’t pollute our atmosphere," said Red Constantino, climate and energy campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

"We need energy here in the Philippines. We are a growing country with a growing demand for power, but it doesn’t make sense to build new coal-fired power stations when we could be building new, clean power stations based on solar or wind (energy) or modern biomass," he said.

According to Greenpeace, the potential power of wind in the Philippines is estimated to be 70,000 megawatts, representing seven times the country’s present total energy demand.

Using modern high efficiency systems, the total energy potential that can be derived from biomass resources such as rice hulls, coconut husks and sugar cane bagasse can potentially provide over 10,000 MW, as increasing population and food consumption per capita require higher agricultural crop production, the international environment activist group said.

Based on the Philippine Energy Plan, the share of new and renewable energy development is set to decrease drastically from 30.03 percent today to 21.69 percent by 2011, it said.