CLEAN energy advocates led by the Power for People Coalition (P4P) and the Withdraw from Coal (WFC) network on Monday called for the inclusion of the power sector in the plans for national survival from the COVID-19 crisis in this year’s State-of-the-Nation Address.
They also sought relief and reform programs and a reaffirmation of marching orders issued by Duterte in the 2019 SoNA.
In the 2019 SoNA, the Chief Executive expressed recognition of the need to fasttrack the development of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on coal, a task he entrusted to the Department of Energy (DoE).
“We welcomed the President’s pledge in 2019 in the hope that it would finally spark change in a power sector that, for so long, has been highly polluting and systematically anti-consumer,” Gerry Arances, convenor of P4P, said.
“It indeed was followed by advances in the implementation of the remaining mechanisms of the Renewable Energy Law, over a decade after it was enacted. But the 21 coal projects still in the national pipeline are telling of the administration’s failure to really advance renewables and end reliance on coal and other fossil fuels,” said Gerry Arances, convenor of P4P.
Arances said the advance of coal would have been worse had it not been for the determined resistance of consumers and host communities.
“Advocates remained along as before the pledge was made. With this, the administration made way for the heightened suffering of Filipinos from exorbitant bills, power outages, and continued pollution during the pandemic,” he said.
According to the group, the COVID-19 crisis revealed deep-seated problems in a power sector characterized by privatization, competition, and deregulation as enabled by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act, for which government interventions are already long overdue.
“This old normal, which harms the integrity of Creation with the proliferation of coal and other fossil fuels and leaves our marginalized sectors at the mercy of private corporations, cannot continue. Our government may have gotten away from responsibility before by simply backing promises for better energy with more pledges or excuses, but the time we are in is different. The gravity of the crisis as experienced by the poor and vulnerable must be reflected in the administration’s ways forward,” said Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, convenor of WFC.
