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[av_heading heading=’Saving Semirara, saving Antique ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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Tuesday, February 28, 2017
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A CAUSE-ORIENTED group in the province of Antique, our sources say, is disappointed because Semirara Mining and Power Corp. in Semirara Island (Caluya, Antique) is not among the mining companies closed by Secretary Gina Lopez of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for violation of environmental laws.
Lopez, perceived to be anti-mining for having scrapped 75 mining contracts, found no reason to disagree with her audit team that had found no violation at Semirara pits.
Other critics of coal energy have shut up, realizing that the shift to coal fuel by power-generating companies has solved power shortage and stabilized energy cost to a level much lower than that imposed by diesel-fed plants.
Incidentally, coal mining in Semirara generates huge tax revenues for Caluya, approaching almost P500 million annually.
Based on available data, the world has enough reserves of coal for at least the next 200 years; whereas gas could be depleted within the next 40 years.
The misconception of coal being a dirty fuel stems from a misunderstanding of its basic principle. Critics of coal compare it to a burning charcoal that boils water. Indeed, coal likewise heats water into steam that drives the turbine to produce electricity.
Like most coal-fired power plants in the world today, however, the coal-fired power plants in the Philippines do not anymore spew black smoke. They utilize the so-called clean-coal technology known in the industry as “circulating fluidized bed technology” consisting of electrostatic precipitators that trap ashes, mercury, particulate matters, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and other gases, preventing them from being released into the atmosphere.
People who still insist on calling coal “dirty” have not visited a coal-fired power plant; probably they have not even seen a piece of coal. Had they visited a coal-fired power plant, they would have erased in their mind the wrong picture of a furnace spewing dirty, black smoke. Modern coal-fired plants emit either snow-white steam or none at all – the exact opposite of generating units that run on bunker or diesel.
Considering the world consumption of oil at more or less 100 million barrels a day, industry insiders estimate the supply to dwindle in more or less 40 years. Hence the need for alternative sources, including renewable energy where feasible. Otherwise, oil prices would keep rising.
Like oil, coal is a fossil fuel. Unlike oil, there’s enough of available coal today to last at least till the next 300 years or even much more.
Way back in the 1700s, the Englishmen found out that coal could produce fuel that burned cleaner and hotter than wood charcoal.
However, it was the overwhelming need for energy to run the new technologies invented during the Industrial Revolution in the United States in the 1800s that provided the real opportunity for coal to fill.
The yarn that coal is hazardous to health could be traced to the generation of an American named James Watt, who invented the steam engine that made railroad trains and steamships run. Both transportations spewed black smoke.
Coal energy has gone a long way since then. In Washington DC in 1979, pioneering scientists and engineers invented the “fluidized bed boiler” at Georgetown University. Over the years, that technology has improved by leaps and bounds into what is now termed as “clean-coal technology.”/PN
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