Stuck with coal,  and ok with it

Whenever the subject of burning coal for purposes of generating power crops up, always expect an immediate reaction by almost everyone. The reactions may vary from polite to benign to passionate and emotional, even angry. Whatever it is, there will be a reaction.

That is because, in a world far removed from the days of muscular power, almost every human undertaking requires mechanical or electrical power to accomplish. And of all the sources of power, it is the use of coal that remains in the mind's eye as something crude and dirty.

There is, of course, no arguing that. By its very nature and natural composition, and by its natural characteristics when subjected to outside influences, coal is indeed crude and dirty.

On the other hand, coal remains to be the cheapest, most abundant and reliable source of power under circumstances that most people would agree to. It is this agreement that has led people to do something about what seems to be the inevitable.

Enter clean coal technology. Scientists, being the practical people that they are, have seen that there is no escaping coal. So, since there is no escaping coal, why not find the means to live with it in the most reassuring way, by being a clean and safe partner to living.

And they have. Clean coal technology is used by the Asia Pacific Energy Corporation, a 52-megawatt coal-fired facility that supplies both steam and electricity to Trust International Paper Corporation ( TIPCO ), a multi-billion-peso newsprint maker in Mabalacat, Pampanga.

Some Cebu journalists had the opportunity recently to check out the APEC facility on a tour arranged by Global Business Power Corporation, which is partly owned by the Aboitiz Power Corporation and Vivant Energy Corporation.

The reason for the tour is that Global Power is putting up a huge coal-fired facility in Toledo City that is meant to infuse much needed power for Cebu in the years ahead. The plant being set up in western Cebu employs the same clean coal technology used by APEC in Pampanga.

The tour of the APEC facility in Pampanga was made immensely easier and more understandable to laymen by the fact that the person who conducted the tour was a Cebuano, Andel Bacalla, of Compostela, a mechanical engineer and head of plant operations.

I met Andel when he was still a boy, on account of his father Antonieto having once been the head teacher of the Cabadiangan Elementary School which was right next to my ancestral home on my father's side of the family. Andel is named after his father, and mother Delia.

Anyway, Andel patiently explained to us the intricacy (or simplicity, as the case may be) of the clean coal technology, which involved nothing more than a series of "trapping and disposing" systems that ensured no ugly by-product ever escaped to pollute the environment.

The APEC plant was " clean and green " and proof that the technology worked may be seen in the "complete" absence of smoke from the smokestack, meticulously monitored by two cameras that sent their pictures to the central control room.

However, the best testimony to this new technology is the absence of the usual protests that environmental activists are so quick to mount against power plants like this. To the best of my knowledge, everything is quiet up there.

So, for as long as the same power plant being set up in Cebu does not deviate from the stringent specifications of the APEC plant, then there should be no reason why clean coal technology should be opposed by anyone.

Admittedly, coal is still coal. But since there is no way Filipinos are likely to go atomic, or afford diesel for long at the rate oil prices are soaring, and wind available only when it blows, then coal is what we are stuck with. But with clean technology around, why not?