QC Council ratifies agreement on Payatas CDM project

The Quezon City Council has passed a resolution ratifying the memorandum of agreement between the QC government and two private corporations for a pioneering project to reduce environment pollution at the Payatas Controlled Dump facility through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

CDM is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol, which allows industrialized countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment to invest in emission reducing projects in developing countries as an alternative to what is generally considered more costly emission reductions in their own countries.

Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. signed the MOA last Feb. 14 with Federieo Micheli and Jennifer Fernan Campos, who represented the firms PANGEA Green Energy S.R.L. of Italy and PANGEA Green Energy Philippines, respectively.

The resolution ratifying the agreement was authored by majority floor leader Ariel Enrile Inton Jr.

The QC government is the first LGU to undertake the CDM project. The project site is home to the Philippines’ first biogas for electrification project that makes use of methane from the garbage beneath the former dumpsite.

The agreement on the CDM providesthat gas extracted from the dumpsite can be converted into a usable energy source.

Councilor Inton said, "the members of the City Council are aware of the countless benefits that this kind of project will bring in terms of social, financial and technological opportunities."

Based on a previous study by the Philippine National Oil Corporation (PNOC), he said the City Council is convinced that there is a need for a CDM project because of the big volume of methane gas that it has been generating since it was first utilized.

The project proponents are Frederika Rentoy, head of the Environmental Protection and Waste Management Department (EPWMD) and Col. Jameel Jaymalin, chief of the Payatas Operations Group (POG).