THE government will not be lifting a moratorium on new coal projects despite calls to lift the ban due to energy security risks exposed by the war in the Middle East, a Cabinet official said on Monday.
"[W]e are not constructing new coal plants because we have a coal moratorium and we are not lifting it,” Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said in a briefing.
“However we are reviewing projects that were filed before the moratorium was imposed and if the developers still want to push through, we want them to get on with it right away in order to balance the country's energy costs.”
Garin had previously said that she was “considering” a proposal by Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan to lift the ban as some countries were delaying renewable energy initiatives to cope with the war’s fallout.
Earlier this month, Balisacan said: “It doesn’t seem to me a bad idea at all to also think about delaying a bit our transition so that we can diversify our sources of energy and make our industries retain their competitiveness.”
Last week, Garin said “yes, we’re considering it,” but qualified that “cleaner technology” should be used and that plans for a transition would also have to be included.
The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry has called for a reversal of the ban, saying: “While the transition to renewable energy remains our long-term goal, our immediate priority must be the stability and affordability of our power grid.”
The coal moratorium was implemented in December 2020 as part of a shift to cleaner and more sustainable energy use.
It allowed projects approved before 2019 to proceed to prevent power shortages.
On Monday, Garin also said that the Energy department was also assessing coal-fired plants for possible retirement due to reliability issues and higher long-term costs for consumers.
"Along with going through [with] the planned projects, we are also looking at possible old coal power plants to be decommissioned as they are costly to maintain,” she said.
“Due to their age, they have started becoming unreliable and are easy to go down, especially during the dry season.”
Coal currently accounts for some 60 percent of the country’s energy mix and the government aims to raise the share of renewable energy to 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050. FROM REPORTS BY ED PAOLO SALTING AND REUTERS
