Civil society groups, communities, and government representatives, including DOE, ERC, and LGU champions on Tuesday (July 16) held a forum launching of an ambitious goal of 10 million solar rooftops across the Philippines.
At the launching at Novotel Manila Araneta City, the theme of the event is “Clean and Affordable Renewable Energy: Launching of the 10 Million Solar Rooftops Challenge”
It was the third launching of such challenge since the first summit held in 2018 and since Typhoon Yolanda struck 10 years ago.
Launched days before President Ferdinand Marcos' Third State of the Nation Address on July 22, the initiative sets forth a challenge for the national government to bring to life its pledge of making renewable energy "the way forward" for the country.
Also present during the launching were Caritas Philippines, P4P Coalition, CEED, New Energy Nexus, Bp. Gerry Alminaza, WWF Philippines, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, ReBoot Philippines, ICLEI Southeast Asia, ADDU-CREATE, Agropolis, CREST, and others.
Gerard “Gerry” Arances, convenor of Power for People Coalition, in his remarks, as one of the lead convenors of the first Clean and Affordable Renewable Energy (CARE) Summit held in 2018, the Power for People Coalition opened the Third CARE Summit by taking stock of the incredible gains that the ecological and climate justice movements have won in the advancement of renewable energy in the Philippines.
Arances invited everyone in joining in the endeavor of building a new movement for renewables.
He noted that never was it experienced in for the longest time that the temperature has reached 46 to 50 degrees which hit most parts of the country.
Arances stressed that he cannot fathom that it would reach 1.5-degree for surface temperature for the first time in human history.
“In a two-degree world, halos lahat ay mawawala,” he said, adding that “We are an archipelagic country and 60 percent of our food intake are aquatic.”
“We are in a precarious situation and it is frightening,” Arances stressed.
He noted that rom a 40-megawatt coal plant, it is now down to 25-megawatt, and the 3.6-gigawatt coal plants were not constructed, notwithstanding the pollution, and most of the inhabitants in those areas are suffering from respiratory illnesses.
And the epicenter is in Batangas, he said, particularly the Verde Island Passage (VIP).
For the past five years, 51.23% of incidents of forced outages were attributed to coal power plants, and 19.87% were to fossil gas, meaning that, the main culprit of rotating brownouts is the forced outages of fossil power plants such as coal-fired power plants.
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