House orders inquiry on coal power plants

Groups opposing the expansion projects of Salcon in Naga and Mirant Global Corporation in Toledo City won the first round of the battle against coal-fired power plants after Congress recently ordered an inquiry into the issue.

With this, Cebu Alliance for Renewable Energy and its allied groups asked the Department of Energy to drop the proposed expansion projects of the two firms.

And with the recent energization of the Leyte-Cebu Interconnection Uprating Project, which provided additional capacity of 200 megawatts to Cebu, the group said there is no longer a need for additional power plants.

Mark Vincent Israel, CARE coordinator, said that supporters of coal-fired power plants are painting a scenario that there is a power crisis when in fact there is none.

"With the operation of the 400-MW Leyte-Cebu Interconnection, Cebu's business community will no longer be hostage to Salcon-KEPCO and Mirant. The capacity addition of the submarine cable from the geothermal facilities in Leyte will secure our power supply even beyond 2011," he said.

Earlier, the DOE forecasted that without any additional capacity, Cebu would experience power shortage by 2011. But Israel said that before 2011, the government and the energy sector have still a lot of time to discuss what plants to put up and what technology to use.

CARE also challenges the business community and the DOE to sit down with them and other environmental groups such as the Greenpeace, World Wide Fund and the UP Solar Laboratory to seek options rather than the "poisonous plants."

"With the congressional inquiry, we ask the DOE and Naga officials to stop acting as spokespersons for Salcon. It is high time for DOE to drop the Salcon-KEPCO project," Israel said. Introduced by Anakpawis partylist Reps. Crispin Beltran and Rafael Mariano, and Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Joel Virador, House Resolution No. 920 orders the committee on environment and natural resources, energy and health to conduct joint investigations into the alleged hazardous emissions of the coal-fired power plants in Cebu and intervene or disallow further expansion of coal plants.

This after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the DOE did not act on the results of the previous inquiry into the hazards of the coal-fired power plants that was conducted last year. Salcon has proposed to expand its existing 105-MW coal-fired power plant in Naga by building two more plants with additional capacity of 100 MW each while Mirant plans to build another 220-MW power plant in addition to its existing 75-MW power plant in Toledo City. - Wenna A. Berondo