BY EUGENE Y.ADIONG
BACOLOD City – The Philippines needs to increase its power supply to address its growing power needs, Sen. Antonio Trillanes said.
Trillanes was in this city yesterday for a speaking engagement with the Central Negros Electric Cooperative.
“We need to put up more power plants as soon as possible,” he suggested.
He also said the government must expedite the licensing of investors in the power sector.
“It requires 160 signatures to construct just one power plant,” Trillanes lamented as he warned of a looming power crisis.”
The economy and the population are growing so the energy demand is also increasing, he explained.
Pressed on the issue of environmental concerns over power plants, Trillanes said, “we need to make up our minds.”
“It doesn’t mean that when we put up power plants, we will destroy the environment,” he said. “There must be some compromise.”
Trillanes had filed bills pushing for renewable energy development.
On the issue of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) blamed by some sectors for the high power rates, the senator said Congress already reviewed it.
“The problems we are facing in terms of power is not because of faulty policies like the EPIRA Law but rather in its implementation,” Trillanes said.
Another senator pushing for renewable energy is Loren Legarda. Time and again, she has described the existential significance of increased investments in renewable energy, particularly in countries affected by climate change such as the Philippines.
If global warming continues as it has, Legarda stressed, the country will have to reckon with a catastrophic impact on a massive on economic growth, food security and public health.
Rice harvests could decline by 75 percent by the end of the century, shrinking the gross national product by three percent and diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dengue fever could spread to epidemic proportions, she warned./PN
