Philippine Houses took a step closer to legislate a much-needed Energy Revolution

I just received a triumphant e-mail message from Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

The Philippine senate and House of Representatives signed on October 7, 2008, the Renewable Energy Bill – adopting the senate version after the deliberations at the Bicameral Conference to resolve the versions of both houses. “The feed-in tariff provisions was accepted without questions. The questions raised were more on the exemptions, tax holidays, and incentives”

Greenpeace “found a last minute insertion of Section 31: adoption of Waste-to-Energy Technologies which included gasification – a form of incineration.”

Greenpeace wrote a position paper asking for the deletion of the word ‘gasification’ “to protect previous gains from its works on incineration.”

Greenpeace proposed the following wordings instead: “consistent with the provisions and intent of the Clean Air Act and the Ecological Solid Management Act”

“Except for the deletion of ‘gasification’, Greenpeace got the rest of the wordings in.”

Below is the Greenpeace Statement on the Approval by the Bicameral Conference Committee of the Renewable Energy Bill on October 7, 2008.

" Greenpeace congratulates the Philippine Senate and the House of Representatives for finally coming together in moving the country a step
closer in legislating a much-needed energy revolution. We expect malacanang to sign the Renewable Energy bill into law very soon.

Once enacted, this landmark legislation is expected not only to end our dependence on climate changing fossil fuels, but also help propel the Philippines towards a low carbon path of economic prosperity and genuine sustainable development. Through this law, we hope to see less and less development of dirty coal power plants and more investments in clean, renewable energy systems.

Greenpeace's Philippine Energy Revolution scenario, has calculated that it is possible for the country to generate as much as 70% of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2050 with wind, biomass, geothermal and solar energy contributing 58% of its capacity.

We now call on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to immediately sign the bill into law and ensure that the law's Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) to be developed by the Department of Energy and other affiliated agencies, do not, in any way, weaken the spirit and intent of the law."

Von Hernadez
Executive Director
Greenpeace South East Asia



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Reference:
Beau Baconguis
Toxics Campaigner
Greenpeace Southeast Asia