Coal substitute stays elusive

Coal remains the preferred energy source in disaster-prone Eastern Visayas.

TACLOBAN CITY — Coal will remain a dominant fuel for the country, particularly among fast-developing regions, since it is the cheapest and most available source of electricity.

For instance, Eastern Visayas, which is a disaster-prone region, remains heavily dependent on energy sourced from coal despite the abundance of geothermal fields.

This reality faces the progressing provinces despite a worldwide movement to shift to clean and renewable energy to minimize global warming and reduce chances of devastating storms like super typhoon “Yolanda” that hit the Visayas area in November 2013 that left over 6,000 people dead.

Aside from “Yolanda,” Eastern Visayas also experienced another weather-induced catastrophe from typhoon “Urduja” in December 2017 where 33 people died and 23 went missing as a result of a landslide in Biliran province caused by continuous rain.

The looming implementation of a 15-year contract entered into by 11 electric cooperatives in Eastern Visayas under an aggregation scheme preempted any possible shift to clean and renewable energy, which may not find realization in the next decade or so.

“Our major concern is the member-consumers. If you see, Tacloban City is booming now, and one reason that we see is the low cost of electricity,” said Fernan Paul Tan, general manager of Leyte II Electric Cooperative (Leyeco 2), whose service franchise include Tacloban City and its neighboring towns of Palo and Babatngon.

“We do not care where the electricity came from as long as we can provide our member-consumer with cheap electricity. That is what we do,” Tan added.

He said Leyeco 2 obtains electricity from four power producers — GN Power, state firm Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp, Korea Electric Power Corp, and Green Core.

Green Core produces electricity from geothermal sources, while the three others come from coal. He said the current electricity mix is 60 percent from coal and 40 percent from clean energy.

Separate contracts were made for the baseload, intermediate loading and peak loading due to variation of prices in certain hours of a day.

“We do that so that unnecessary exposure on a certain price is minimized,” Tan explained.

Leyeco 2 power demand has been continually increasing over the last four years, from a base load demand of 65 megawatts of electricity in 2015 to 93 MW in 2018 and current projection is that it will triple in the next decade.

The predicament of Leyte province in relying on supposed environment-threatening coal despite its being a victim of the effects of changing global weather patterns is replicated in other parts of the fast progressing nation in which the demand for energy had multiplied.

Department of Energy (DoE) Secretary Alfonso Cusi had anticipated the surge in energy demand, which he said would have coal-fired power plants remaining as a dominant energy source in the coming decade.

He said that his department would be “technology-neutral” in the approval of new power plants. He has also maintained his position that fixed and subsidized rates for renewable energy is over.

“The technology-neutral approach taken by the DoE since I came into office has seen our generation capacity grow while maintaining our renewable energy mix and reducing our dependence on expensive oil imports,” Cusi had said.

“All energy options are considered on the basis of affordability, reliability, security and sustainability,” he further stated.

Coal power plants accounted for 39 percent of the country’s 21,241 megawatts (MW) of installed energy capacity last year, followed by renewable energy with 31 percent, while natural gas and oil-based plants had 16 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

Ironically, Leyte hosts the biggest geothermal source in the country, which is the Tongonan facility that used to be run by the state-owned Philippine National Oil Company but was privatized and sold to the Lopez-owned First Philippine Holdings Corp.

The Tongonan facility, now under the Energy Development Corp., has four geothermal power plant, namely Tongonan 1, Upper Mahiao, Malitbog and Mahanagdong, generating a total baseload capacity of 711.4 MW of clean and reliable electricity.

Tan said while geothermal energy is local to Eastern Visayas, electric cooperatives in the region could not patronize because the price it offers is beyond the means of local electric coops.

“We should understand what is geothermal to us. When EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001) came into life, it gave the government the chance to sell this entity, the geothermal, which we consider as ours. But now, as Leyeco 2, why should we buy electricity at P7 from them if there is coal that sells for only P3?” Leyeco 2’s Tan said.

EPIRA instituted reforms in the energy sector, including the restructuring of the power industry to introduce competition in the generation sector mainly through privatization of power plants.