Coal plants stoke community fears

 

 

 

After the three-day “Welgang Bayan” (People’s Strike) against the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) in June 1985 and the mothballing of the 620-megawatt facility a year later by President Corazon Aquino in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Russia, Julito Velasco thought his fight to defend the environment and the health of his townmates in Morong, the plant site, was over.

Now 74 and a retired government employee, Velasco believes he still has to continue his cause. He speaks in forums and joins protests to prevent the BNPP’s revival, first broached during the term of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and now by the Duterte administration.

But this time, his footprints are deep in another path to block a related toxic threat: coal-fired power plants and the government’s reliance on them as energy source.

“Like nuclear plants, coal plants are under the culture of death,”

said Velasco, who works with the Coal-Free Bataan Movement (CFBM), echoing a perspective in the encyclical letter “Laudato Si” of Pope Francis.

While many countries are already pivoting away from fossil fuel use, countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, remain on the path of coal expansion. While burning coal is often touted as a cheap source of energy, its impacts on public health and the environment are dire.

Coal-fired power plants are among the major contributors of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. These emissions are the main driver of climate change, the impacts of which are already felt in extreme weather events and rising sea levels.

Scientists and environmental advocates alike have called for the urgent end to the use of coal and other fossil fuels, shifting instead to renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal power.In Bataan province alone, six coal plants are operating. These are the 690-MW GN Power of Mariveles Energy Center Ltd. and the 668-MW Unit 1 of GN Power Dinginin (testing prior to commercial operation), both in Barangay Alas-asin, Mariveles town; the 140-MW refinery solid fuel fired boiler (RSFFB) Phase 1 of Petron Corp. and the 648-MW SMC Pan Asia by Ingrid 2 Power Corp., both in Barangay Alangan, Limay town; and two plants inside the Petron refinery of San Miguel Corp. (SMC) in Barangay Lamao, Limay.

Coal boom

Five more plants are being built or planned. These are the 44-MW RSFFB Phase 3 inside the Petron refinery in Limay; two plants with a combined capacity of 1,200 MW due in 2022 and 2023 by SMC/Mariveles Power Generation Corp. in Barangay Biaan, Mariveles; a 600-MW complex by Zest Power in Mariveles, and a 300-MW plant by SMC Pan Asia Ingrid 2 Power Corp. in Batangas province.

The presence of a Petron oil refinery in Limay in 1961 could have paved the way for companies engaged in fuel and power production to set up base in Bataan. A succession of laws designed Limay, as well as Mariveles, to host such industries.

In 1968, President Ferdinand Marcos issued Proclamation No. 361, which reserved 418 hectares in Limay’s Lamao for industrial purposes. The land was carved out from the 621-ha Lamao Horticultural Experiment Station, which was also declared an industrial reservation.

The next year, Marcos issued Proclamation No. 630, expanding the Lamao industrial estate.

In 1976, Presidential Decree No. 949 vested the administration and ownership of the estate to Philippine National Oil Co. and the area later became a petrochemical industrial zone.

In 2009, Mariveles benefited from Republic Act (RA) No. 9728, which converted the Bataan Economic Zone into the Freeport Area of Bataan (FAB).

In 2013, Congress passed RA No. 10516, expanding the use of the Lamao industrial estate for “businesses engaged in energy and energy-related infrastructure project and other gainful economic activities in addition to petrochemical and related industries.” In 2018, RA No. 11453 widened FAB coverage beyond Mariveles.

Bane of coal

“Communities were evicted and fishersfolk were prohibited from fishing around plant sites. To give way to plant construction and expansion, old grown trees were cut and vegetable farms destroyed,”

CFBM reported, summarizing the slew of problems arising from hosting coal plants.The daily plant operation, it said, involves “waste spillage on the roads, emission of sickening ashes and odor, and constant troubling noise” that are “not monitored nor mitigated.”

Environmental degradation is also visible in the “decline of fish harvests from the bay, worsened poverty of the residents, water crisis and prevalence of respiratory illnesses and skin diseases associated with polluted environment,” the group said.Fighting coal plants can be risky.

Months before the murder of Gloria Capitan, a chapter president of CFBM’s Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Mamamayan ng Lucanin in Mariveles on July 1, 2016, she spoke against mining and open storage of coal in her village. The killing is still unsolved.In some instances, intimidation and threats might come from local officials, policemen or private emissaries, CFBM documentation showed.

Josie de Mesa, a catechist and a retired coordinator of the social action committee of the Diocese of Balanga in Bataan, frowned at the local governments’ attitude toward coal plant projects as “welcoming.” “The residents are promised jobs. But they are hired only for short-term construction works, and that’s that,” she said.

De Mesa said the coal plants in Mariveles had also encroached on the ancestral lands of the Aeta people.

For CBFM spokesperson Alvin Pura, public consultations were a “farce” because the “people’s actual adverse experiences about living near coal plants are ignored or only a few are made to attend these” meetings.

“We only get to know about the consultations through the website of the Environmental Management Bureau,” he said.

 

Masinloc’s experience

In neighboring Zambales province, the coal plant in the coastal town of Masinloc, about 250 kilometers northwest of Metro Manila, and considered one of the country’s oldest in the power industry, was built despite vehement opposition from local communities, especially the village of Bani, due to fear that it would endanger the environment and their health.

The Masinloc Power Plant (MPP) was put up by the government in the late 1990s and operated by National Power Corp. (Napocor) through a US$2-million loan from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Export-Import Bank of Japan. It occupies 11 ha of reclaimed land and its two units produce a combined capacity of 600 MW for consumers in Luzon.

While plant construction was under way, environmentalists, including farmers and fishermen, staged protest actions to voice out fears that it would pollute the air and its waste water would contaminate the bay area and kill the local fishing industry.

Because of the opposition, the project was delayed for four years, but it finally pushed through in 1998 after President Fidel V. Ramos, using emergency powers during a bleak power supply situation, gave the go-signal. Close to 200 families or 1,000 individuals were displaced, according to the local government.

Validating their fears, environmentalists reported that the Masinloc plant had been spewing 385,000 tons of ash yearly and massive amounts of carbon dioxide, putting people’s health at grave risk.

In 2008, the plant was sold by Napocor to the US-based AES Corp. following the passage of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act. It was touted as the first privatized power plant in the country and made AES the largest foreign investor in the country’s power sector.

Before the acquisition, however, the MPP had already deteriorated. ADB reported at that the plant’s operating performance had “declined” since 2001, citing “inadequate maintenance and insufficient capital investments in anticipation of the planned privatization.”

AES said it had to spend more than US$1 billion to restore the facility and double its capacity by building another 300-MW unit by 2015 and a 300-MW plant by 2018.

In March 2018 , the San Miguel group, through SMC Global Power Holdings, took full ownership of the Masinloc facility for $1.9 billion.

 

La Union’s fight

Though environmental activists failed to stop the operation of coal plants in Bataan and Zambales, they continue to rally communities against future megacoal-fired plants, such as the proposed 670-MW project in La Union province.

The plant of Global Luzon Energy Development Corp., a subsidiary of Global Business Power Corp. (GBPC) under the Metro Pacific Group, would be built on a 41-ha property hugging the seaside villages of Carisquis and Nalvo Sur in Luna town.

“Risky, polluting and destructive”

was how it was described by protesting groups, including the community-based Koalisyon Isalbar ti Pintas ti La Union (Coalition to Save the Beauty of La Union or CSBLU), the Diocese of La Union, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines La Union Chapter, and the association of surfers and of resort owners in the province.

The proposed plant site is near beach resorts, as well as the 3-km stretch of pebble shore where the 400-year-old Spanish “baluarte” (watchtower) is found, said Crisanto Palabay, the chair of CSBLU.

Currently, the project is stalled, but its proponents were already granted an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Oct. 4, 2018.

 

“The threat is still there. If the proponents decide to resume the project, they still can. We have to be vigilant.”

— Crisanto Palabay

 

CSBLU and the other groups had repeatedly written to the DENR seeking to revoke the ECC for alleged violations committed by the proponents, including the absence of an environment impact study.

There was no reply from the agency, Palabay said. “We have exhausted all administrative means, but nothing has come out of our efforts. So we will just file a case against the DENR,” he said in an interview earlier this month.

Luna officials supporting the coal plant, led by former mayor Victor Marvin Marron, claimed that the bigger population of the town had stayed away from the protest activities and that the project would benefit Luna as part of the government’s massive infrastructure programs.

In an interview last week, Marron said that the during its construction, the plant would need at least 2,500 workers and that local residents would be given priority in the hiring. Once the plant starts operations, it will need 300 personnel, he said.

He also believed that measures would be implemented to ensure that the plant’s operations will not affect marine life and agriculture.

Marron ran for vice mayor and lost in the 2019 local elections but the winning mayor, Rachel Pinzon, was his running mate and possibly has the same stand as his.

Palabay claimed that most of the residents who are procoal plant were cash aid beneficiaries under the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and were “pressured to support the plant.”

CSBLU rued that while the majority of the people living in villages around the project site support the project, ”the views of [those in] … other nearby villages that would be affected by the nitrous dioxide from the plant were excluded or ignored.”

Out­side Luna, at least three towns have banned coal-fired power plants and have stood up against the Luna project.

The surf­ing town of San Juan was the first in La Union to close its doors to coal plants on March 11, 2019, cit­ing the need to pre­serve bio­di­ver­sity and pro­tect the health of res­i­dents.

Aringay fol­lowed in the same month, ba­si­cally adopt­ing San Juan’s res­o­lu­tion. While Luna is 60 km away from the two towns, Aringay of­fi­cials said they share the same coast­line.

San Gabriel passed a res­o­lu­tion on July 15, 2019, op­pos­ing the project, declar­ing it as a threat to their shared en­vi­ron­ment, liveli­hood and well-be­ing of their con­stituents.

 

Que­zon’s plant con­struc­tion

In Que­zon prov­ince, con­struc­tion of a 1,200-MW coal­fired plant on an 80-ha land in the vil­lage of Villa Ibaba, Ati­mo­nan town, is on­go­ing amid protests from the Dio­cese of Lu­cena and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist groups.

Crit­ics ar­gued that the fa­cil­ity would only add to en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion al­ready suf­fered by the prov­ince with its ex­ist­ing coal-fired plants.

Que­zon is host to the 1,500MW plant in Mauban town fac­ing the Pa­cific Ocean and the 420-MW and 735-MW plants of TeaM En­ergy Corp. and Aboitiz Power Corp. in Pag­bi­lao town fac­ing the Tayabas Bay.

Que­zon Gov. Danilo Suarez has main­tained that

“as long as the power plants in the prov­ince will be us­ing ul­tra­su­per­crit­i­cal tech­nol­ogy, there will be no prob­lem.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Brus­sels-based non­profit GreenFacts Ini­tia­tive, an ul­tra­su­per­crit­i­cal power plant op­er­ates at tem­per­a­tures and pres­sures above the crit­i­cal boil­ing point of water, where there is no dif­fer­ence be­tween water gas and liq­uid water.

GreenFacts—whose mis­sion is to pro­vide non­ex­perts with un­bi­ased, fac­tual con­tent of com­plex sci­en­tific con­sen­sus re­ports on health and the en­vi­ron­ment— said this would make such power plants more ef­fi­cient than con­ven­tional coal-fired plants.

The pro­po­nent of the Ati­mo­nan power plant boasted that it is set to use such tech­nol­ogy in its op­er­a­tion. The govern­ment has also ap­proved the project.

“Site prepa­ra­tions is on­go­ing,” an of­fi­cial of Ati­mo­nan One En­ergy (A1E), a sub­sidiary of Mer­alco Pow­er­gen Corp.’s, dis­closed to the In­quirer on Aug. 13.

The of­fi­cial, who asked not to be named for lack of author­ity to speak to the me­dia, said the project cur­rently em­ploys more than 500 lo­cal res­i­dents do­ing a va­ri­ety of jobs, such as build­ing drainage around the site.

“We still need to build power plants uti­liz­ing high ef­fi­ciency, low emis­sions tech­nol­ogy to com­ple­ment re­new­able power plants be­cause we need sta­ble and re­li­able sup­ply of baseload power, es­pe­cially now that we’re ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ‘yel­low and red alerts’ dur­ing the sum­mer months,” the of­fi­cial said.

An­ti­coal groups are not about to give up. “We will con­tinue our zeal­ous op­po­si­tion against all coal-fired power plants. We will con­duct all forms of protest to bring our mes­sage across,” said Jay Lim, project of­fi­cer of Tang­gol Ka­likasan, a public in­ter­est law of­fice based in the pro­vin­cial cap­i­tal of Lu­cena City.

Lim called on all na­tional and lo­cal can­di­dates in the next elec­tions to de­clare their stand on coal-fired power plants. “Yes to re­new­able en­ergy, no to coal! And those who will not join us in the bat­tle will in­vite the wrath of mil­lions of an­ti­coal plant ad­vo­cates on elec­tion day,” he warned.

 

Palawan cru­sade

In Palawan prov­ince, a civil so­ci­ety group has re­lent­lessly drummed up sup­port to stop the con­struc­tion of a 15-MW coal plant project in the south­ern town of Narra. The project of DMCI Power Corp. re­ceived a go-ahead sig­nal from the DENR in June 2018 and the back­ing of lo­cal of­fi­cials for its “clean” tech­nol­ogy.

“There’s no such thing as clean coal. There are many other al­ter­na­tive sources of en­ergy that we should in­stead pay at­ten­tion to.”

—Renz Teno­rio, a con­venor of the No To Coal Move­ment

On July 31, around 70 peo­ple held an in­ter­faith rally at a church in Narra to pray for the en­vi­ron­ment and call for the govern­ment’s “en­light­en­ment” to heed their de­mands.

Sus­pended Mayor Gerandy Danao sent a video mes­sage of sup­port to them, say­ing the dam­age that a coal plant would wrought on the en­vi­ron­ment far out­weighed the ben­e­fits it could pro­vide to the com­mu­nity, and that lo­cal of­fi­cials should in­stead give pri­or­ity to farm-tomar­ket roads, liveli­hood, food suf­fi­ciency and public health.

Danao at­trib­uted his sus­pen­sion by the pro­vin­cial govern­ment since Septem­ber 2020 to his an­ti­coal po­si­tion.

The town’s act­ing mayor, Crispin Lumba Jr., de­clined to com­ment on the protest and in­stead asked res­i­dents to let the project run its course, “sub­ject to strin­gent en­vi­ron­men­tal com­pli­ance.”

Un­der the ECC granted for the project, DMCI Power must set up a con­tin­u­ous emis­sion mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem for real-time eval­u­a­tion of air dis­charges. It should also carry out so­cial de­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment pro­grams for af­fected com­mu­ni­ties in the vil­lage of Bato-Bato (for­merly San Isidro), and en­sure com­pli­ance with all ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal laws, such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.

 

Min­danao projects

In Min­danao, two coal-fired power plants were able to op­er­ate de­spite stiff op­po­si­tion from com­mu­ni­ties—the 300-MW Therma South Inc. in Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur prov­ince, owned by Aboitiz Power; and the 552-MW GN Power Kauswa­gan in Kauswa­gan, Lanao del Norte prov­ince, owned by GN Power Ltd.

The 250-MW Pu­langi V hy­dropower plant along the Pu­langi River in Bukid­non prov­ince has been stalled be­cause it would sub­merge the vil­lages of in­dige­nous peo­ples, es­pe­cially their burial grounds and farms.

Also fac­ing re­sis­tance from Maranao com­mu­ni­ties is the planned 240-MW Agus 3 hy­dropower plant along the Agus River, from Saguiaran, Lanao del Sur prov­ince to Pan­tar and Baloi towns in Lanao del Norte. The project could in­un­date Maranao farms.

In Oza­mis City, the 300-MW coal project of the Avesco group’s Oza­miz Power Gen­er­a­tion Inc. has failed to take off be­cause of wide­spread community opposition.

Reports from Tonette Orejas, Jhesset O. Enano, Joanna Rose Aglibot, Yolanda Sotelo, Delfin Mallari Jr., Romar Miranda and Ryan Rosauro

This story was first published in the August 27, 2021 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Road to Clean Energy special report.