Government must lead in crafting a national plan on how the Philippines can become carbon neutral, industry officials said.
Carbon neutrality is seen to be achieved by balancing emissions of carbon dioxide with its removal or by eliminating sources of emissions to reach net zero emissions.
Eric Francia, ACEN president and chief executive officer, said the government must exercise its leadership and craft a net zero commitment so that private sector proponents who are pioneering similar efforts on their own will not be at a disadvantage.
Francia said at the Conference of the Electricity Power Supply Industry yesterday, companies with their own initiatives to achieve net zero will have to closely monitor the emission of their supply chains which may or may not be imitated by other firms without a clear directive from the government.
“These are some of the burning questions… but if you have a government policy backing and, more than encouraging but requiring everyone to move in the same direction, then it’s a level playing field and we’re all marching to the same tune. I don’t think only corporates will be sufficient and I think there needs to be a drive from the government,” Francia added.
Emmanuel Rubio, Aboitiz Power president and chief executive officer, said the government should also consider tapping financial institutions to fund energy transition mechanisms especially in the planned phaseout of coal-fired power plants in the next 15 years.
Francis Giles Puno, First Gen Corp. president and chief operating officer, said the government is beginning to recognize the role of natural gas as the fuel to bridge capacity gap when coal plants are phased out.
Giles, however said, rules are still unclear.
“The timing of the entry of LNG (terminal next year) could not have been timed so perfectly. In fact, it’s really timely,” said Puno, noting it is unfair for companies to take the risks when they cannot forecast their revenues.
Jaime Azurin, Meralco Power Gen Corp. president and chief executive officer, said achieving net zero will be challenging unless renewable energy power plants can be developed with storage facilities.
“While I agree that there has to be a timely shutting down of these coal plants, the transition fuel, I agree is gas. It’s more efficient, it’s less pollutant but after that, if we are to go to net zero by 2050, there are still technologies being developed to replace all of these baseload plants and you cannot expand and expand on renewables without storage, without efficient baseload,” Azurin said.
