THE GOVERNMENT, through the Department of Energy, is at it again.
In a recent briefing, Energy Secretary Angelo T. Reyes told the media that the Philippine Energy Plan (PEP) would be extended to 2030 as the 2005-2014 plan was "not applicable to some regions" which can be interpreted as an oblique admission that the original plan was full of holes, to put it kindly.
We are only three years into the original plan, yet we are effectively dumping it in the guise of extending it far into the future when nobody wouldn't, or couldn't, validate the plans.
The 2005-2014 PEP targets a 60% energy self-sufficiency level by 2010 and pursues effective reforms in the power sector. In effect, these aims are no longer valid.
The major problem of such a plan is not so much on the length of time, but on the soundness of the content. If one looks back at the 2005-2014 PEP plan, some are bordering on the grandiose bereft of solid fundamentals. Even a simple assessment of the electricity supply and demand situation for the next few years was off the mark.
Some aims were more of motherhood statements than concrete plans. For example, the plan aims to make the Philippines the number one producer by 2014 I believe, yet no rigorous verification was made whether such listed areas were in fact capable of producing the indicative MW outputs. If one were to compare our geothermal program with those of others such as the US and Indonesia, the gap between our production with US will widen by a huge margin, and we would be eating the dust of Indonesia even if we only count the committed and ongoing geothermal projects of the latter. We will surely slide to third, or even fourth worldwide.
For another example, the plan declares that we would be the premier wind energy producer by the end of the period, yet there is not even a comment whether the infrastructure to achieve such aim is in place. The Department cannot even push for the passage of a renewable energy bill which could be a springboard of a nascent renewable energy industry to significantly grow. The renewable energy bill itself, which is pending in congress for ages, does not have much substance.
The Department even relies on a study by the U.S., National Renewables Energy Laboratory (NREL) for the inventory of our own wind energy resources.
What the Department could do for example, rather than making yet another grand plan that stretches far into the future, is to set down and carefully study the implications of the renewable energy bill's provisions.
The end product could be white papers on renewable portfolio standards, how to set up the net metering infrastructure, or even the pros and cons of a feed-in tariff system which jumpstarted the wind and solar power industries in many areas of the world, but did not merit any mention at all in the RE bill.
Our legislators are too busy politicking to come up with really outstanding pieces of legislation that could help shape our energy policy. At the very least, the Department could pitch in to educate our lawmakers. Whatever comprehensive energy policy we have, if any, would now be sorely antiquated.
In the meantime, the international energy industry is in a swirling vortex, with energy and commodity prices in a wild roller coaster ride, and all our policy makers could do is watch helplessly in the dust, and wonder what has happened.
Capital intended for energy infrastructure around the world has been zigzagging across national boundaries, looking for worthwhile projects, but most are bypassing the country. Why, the DOE should ask.
Trading of carbon credits and other energy related financial instruments has been swelling at a blistering pace for the last two years, with the voluntary carbon market-- as opposed to the regulated carbon market-- tripling each year in value with hardly anyone from our energy policymakers noticing. The generators of these trad able instruments come mostly from renewable energy projects from developing countries, the Philippines included, only if we have put the right infrastructure in the first place.
There are many other worthwhile projects for our DOE other than crafting yet another nebulous energy plan.
Agree, so much is happening in energy on a 2-3 year basis that much of what we think about the future may change sooner than we think.
ReplyDelete