IN a previous column, this writer warned against certain medical practitioners affiliated with the Responsible Ilonggos for Sustainable Energy (RISE) who had been guesting on radio and TV talk shows to galvanize the Ilonggos into opposing Global Business Power Corporation’s proposed coal-fired power plant. I wondered whether they were agents of the oil cartel with a “mission” to spread lies about the air pollution that coal could bring. The oil companies are certainly not happy over shift from oil to coal among power plants worldwide.

The doctors, in fact, have repeatedly sought the attention of Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas, to “enlighten” him on the so-called environmental hazards of coal.

Alas for RISE advocates, the mayor is more “enlightened” than they. In fact, the mayor and the majority of city councilors have personally paid visits to coal-fired power plants in the Philippines and Taiwan for the sheer purpose of probing the so-called clean-coal technology. If there are coal-caused environmental hazards there, then they would be the last persons to endorse the technology despite our acute power shortage that has been causing brownouts.

This corner, though a usual critic of the mayor’s “tun-an ta anay” attitude, would like to congratulate him for sensing the real motives of the anti-coal group, which was to sway him into disallowing the construction of the first coal-fired power plant in the entire Western Visayas. Indeed, the mayor has several times told media he is for construction of the GBPC coal-fired plant. He is becoming impatient over the delay in its construction, pending the grant of an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

RISE has made a new claim: Emission from coal-fired power plants may cause cardiovascular diseases kuno!

Mayor Treñas must have wondered why, if that were so, the governments of the United States, China and the European countries have not yet condemned coal-fired power plants.

You see, the RISE doctors minced no words in saying in a radio-TV appearance that the coal-fired power plants in the United States and China are gradually being dismantled kuno.

On the 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Sual, Pangasinan, one of them said, “It’s so polluted that the only fish left at sea there is the jellyfish.”

I knew he was lying because I had spent three days at Sual and saw for myself the more than a hundred fish-rich fish pens surrounding the power plant. And the natives are so healthy that only one government doctor was around to attend to the sick few. For lack of patients, all the private physicians had migrated to Metro Manila.

Asked why they were ignoring the diesel and gas pollution that buses, cars, jeepneys and tricycles bombard the streets all the time, the male doctor shrugged it off, “Ara na ina. It’s part of our lives.”

Is that a responsible statement from a doctor? He warns us against an unproven polluter but ignores what has been causing asthma, TB, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. The subliminal message seems to be: More diseases, for patients!

This corner has always warned readers against so-called environmentalists whose true motive is to keep us forever at the mercy of the abusive oil cartel. If they are in the payroll of the oil companies, that’s not surprising. The oil cartel has lost the patronage of more than 50 per cent of power plants in the United States and China , which are already coal-fired. If these power plants would revert to diesel, then the price of oil would probably be double its present cost of US $115 per barrel in the world market.

Initially, Greenpeace and other anti-coal organizations scared us by showing images of coal-fired trains and ships of long ago that spewed thick black smoke. But when we saw for ourselves that modern coal-fired power plants don’t even emit smoke, they revised and reversed the black propaganda: It’s invisible but still hazardous.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Considering that coal has been in massive use as fuel for more than 200 years, long before gas, the technology has already gone a long way.

Modern coal-fired power plants have special devices that clean the sulfur from the coal’s combustion gases before the gases go up the smokestack. The technical name for these devices is “flue gas desulfurization units,” but most people just call them “scrubbers” — because they “scrub” the sulfur out of the smoke released by coal-burning boilers. Most scrubbers rely on crushed limestone to absorb sulfur gases much like a sponge absorbs water.

Limestone is mixed with water and sprayed into the coal combustion gases (called “flue gases”). The limestone captures the sulfur and “pulls” it out of the gases. The limestone and sulfur combine with each other to form either a wet paste that traps the sulfur and prevents it from escaping into the air.

The tumbling action allows limestone to be mixed in with the coal. A chemical reaction occurs, and the sulfur gases are changed into a dry powder that can be removed from the boiler. Incidentally, this dry powder is not wasted; it is now popular material for cheap wallboard.

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