THERE ARE ONLY three significant issues in coal as far as Iloilo City is concerned. First, whether or not Iloilo City is suffering or will suffer a power shortage in the coming years; two, whether or not coal has health and environmental hazards; and, whether or not renewable energy as an alternative power source is available in Panay.

The fact that oppositors to the establishment of a coal plant here, which uses clean coal technology in Iloilo City, are squandering for concrete data to back up their claims of adequate power supply betrays their position.

Recurring brownouts in the city may be caused by faults in the distribution lines of Peco and the transmission line of Transco, or when Napocor’s energy supply to the NPC grid disappears for some reasons. Why include Napocor? Because it supplies Iloilo City 15 MW.  Panay Power Corporation (PPC) supplies the rest of the city’s power needs. PPC now has below industry standards reserve capacity. My data may not be latest but the last time I checked it was below 10 megawatts. Thus, wide parts of the city experience long outages even if only two or three Peco feeders get offline because of some faults in Peco’s lines or Transco’s transmission lines which should be traced all the way from Leyte to Cebu to Negros and finally to Panay.

It is worth noting that the 15 megawatts being supplied by Napocor to Peco is up for renegotiation. Peco’s contract with Napocor will expire in the middle of this year. As a layman, I don’t know how the privatization of Napocor’s power plants will impact Peco’s renegotiation efforts.

Another important fact that Ilonggos should take into account is the location of Panay in the Cebu-Negros-Panay (CNP) Grid. We are at the tail end of the grid, thus we are always at the begging end of the line, let alone the high probability of natural and man-made faults or risks the transmission lines face.

If there is sufficient power in the grid, why did the Cebu provincial government give the green light for the construction of new, additional capacity? For the information of Greenpeace, the mother organization behind the anti-coal crusade here, Cebu has decided to adopt new coal plants to help stabilize its baseload capacity needs.

Currently, electric cooperatives in Panay are suffering from rotating brownouts or power shedding because of fluctuating supply from Napocor.

On the health and environment fronts, coal oppositors continue to scare the public with mercurial stories about diseases, which a human body might contract from an overload of mercury. Until now, however, they have not presented concrete evidence showing that a person got sick or died because of mercury pollution from coal plants. What they have been parading are possible risks.

Toledo City in Cebu has been hosting a plant for thirty-one (31) years now and nobody has been reported to have suffered from mercury poisoning from its coal plant. An independent medical and health study (blood examination) has been done for residents living near the coal plant and lo and behold, not one blood sample showed high or abnormal concentration of mercury.

Coal plants have served the industrialization and rapid economic development of many nations on earth. They have been on this planet for many decades now but the oppositors have yet to present a human body to back up their scare tactics.

There is no zero sum when it comes to human endeavors. But clean coal technology affords us the luxury that coal plant emissions are well below the standards set by international and domestic laws and regulations. If we are after zero sum propositions for the environment vis-à-vis human activities, then we better get back to the caves and watch the sun rise and set while sitting idly on its soft and cold earth.

There is no question that renewables are the fashion statement of the energy sector. Renewables are the craze for now and the future. But Panay Island is so unlucky because we simply don’t have renewables which are economically viable and technically feasible. I hope in the near future Panay develops its renewables because time will come that all fossil fuels like oil and coal will be exhausted. No doubt that renewables are the energy of the future but what should we do given our energy problems now? If the oppositors can assure us that they can give the city a 100-MW baseload power from their renewables in 2010, by all means let us delay or even stop the construction of coal. Most if not all industrialized and progressive countries who are financially capable of developing the renewables are still dependent on coal.

Finally, the group of Melvin Purzuelo, head of Green Forum Western Visayas, Inc., which is requesting for a P.88-million funding grant from World Bank for its Multi-Stakeholders Power Development Plan (Stage 2), has been harping on the expansion of the geothermal fields in Negros. Well, he should first negotiate with the church and his fellow environmentalists in Negros who are protesting such a plan. But even if that were possible, the first to benefit from it are Cebu and Negros. And by the time its power reaches Panay (when would it be), we can only guess how much it will cost the consumers here, assuming there is available extra supply for Panay.

Assuming that Transco can be coerced to uprate its submarine cables from Cebu to Negros to Panay, the more vital question of supply will still make it a useless but expensive proposition if no new capacities are installed now and in the future.

Let’s go renewables, but please tell us where and how. Now! I am sure investors will not hesitate to invest their money in renewables if there are available in Panay.

2 Responses to “Coal or no coal: It’s your choice”

• 1
  danny
  April 17th, 2008 19:37

  Very well said!!!
• 2
  blue
  August 15th, 2008 22:23

  what you have presented is the one side of the the 3 main issues you are posting.it is obvious that in the end you are indeed pro coal.. and please do not mislead the reader by presenting only the half truths about the issue..your article is full of half truths therefore its misleading. you better research and read more articles on this matter.and come to think of this..why is it that majority of scientists worldwide agrees that clean coal technology is oxymoron=contradiction?furthermore, why is it that most first world countries today are now moving towards green technology??please reflect on this.

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