MANILA – Environmental group Philippine Movement for Climate Justice has vowed more mass actions against dirty coal-fired power plants in the country and strongly criticized President Benigno Aquino for insisting on seeking emergency power to address a perceived shortage of electricity next year.
“The President does not need the emergency power he seek. That is why we are taking to the streets to register our resistance against coal and emergency powers. This is the message of the National Day of Action against Coal, our contribution to Reclaim Power, the global call to ban dirty energy projects which greatly contribute to climate change,” said Gerry Arances, PMCJ national coordinator.
He said this year’s action is wider in spread and deeper in depth compared to last year’s National Day of Action against Coal in the Philippines.
In the National Capital Region, he said climate activists walked from Plaza Miranda to Mendiola carrying a giant effigy of a Janus-Face monster the half-part of which was Aquino’s and the other half was that of Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla. “This is to convey their stand that the Aquino administration is only using the contrived threat of a so-power crisis as a justification to run through their corporate-government-sponsored coal avalanche,” he said.
He said under the current administration, coal projects have steadily increased. From an existing 17 coal-fired power plants will be an additional 26 coal plant projects which are expected to be online by 2020. Also, from 2007 to August 2013, the total Coal Operating Contracts (COCs) awarded by the government almost doubled – from 39 COCs to 71 COCs with 15 other areas still up for offer.
Lawyer Jose Aaron Pedrosa, Secretary-General of SANLAKAS, and head of the PMCJ Energy Working Group said the grant of emergency powers to Aquino will ensure that any legal challenge against proposed coal-fired power plants will be effortlessly warded off thus ultimately guaranteeing that the spadework for their construction will be unhampered and unchallenged. He said all these intramural on the grant of emergency powers overshadow the real power crisis that has beset the sector for more than a decade now.
He said at present, some 2.7 million households remain without access to electricity and the country’s power rates are the most expensive in Asia and rank fifth in the world.
James Matthew Miraflor, Vice President of Freedom from Debt Coalition, said market manipulation and collusion are at its worst with prices being manipulated in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), defying a cornerstone promise of Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA)– of providing affordable and reliable electricity to the people. More than 13 years after EPIRA was passed, five families control the power industry.
“This is the real power crisis,” he said. (Mindanao Examiner)
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