Barcena

THE push for net zero initiatives will be further strengthened if the Philippines will have an official declaration from the government.

Allan Barcena, Energy Development Corp. assistant vice president and head of corporate social responsibility, told reporters in an interview last week companies are currently left to integrate net zero efforts on their own.

Net zero refers to the balance between the amount of emitted greenhouse gas against the amount being removed from the atmosphere.

“If you look at the list of countries which have net zero commitments, most of (the Philippines’) Asian neighbors do have a country commitment. In the Philippines, we don’t have… we don’t have a declaration about achieving net zero by 2050 but we have an NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution),” Barcena said at the sidelines of a forum hosted by the Net Zero Carbon Alliance (NZCA) in Makati City. 

“We have an NDC which is to cut our emissions by 75 percent… The qualification is availability of funds and technology. What the Philippines is saying is that if we do not have the funds and the technology, we cannot do that 75- percent reduction,” Barcena said.

The Philippines does not have a binding plan to achieve net zero apart from the target to slash economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent for 2020 to 2030 under the updated NDC target.

Barcena said a national policy to officially push net zero would be better as its presence will amplify the positive effects of the effort across all sectors.

“Other sectors, energy, or agriculture, private sector, private companies, academe, they will all follow the commitment. But in the absence of (a declaration), we have individual efforts,” Barcena said.

He said businesses have formed the NZCA to “have a collective effort to take that journey even without a country commitment.”

NZCA was first formed in 2021 and is composed of 34 partners.

Under the country’s current NDC, the government also aims to increase the renewable energy’s (RE) share in the power generation mix to 35 percent by 2030 and raise it further to 50 percent by 2050.