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IF the
so-called energy summit, set for January 29 to February
5, is to amount to anything, it must aim for something
better than “ensuring the proper pricing of fuel.”
Attributed to Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes, the sound
bite belies his objective for the high-level
meeting—which is essentially political.
For
decades the government has sought to artificially
depress the retail prices of gasoline, diesel fuel and
other petroleum products. The very idea of the martial
law-era Ministry of Energy, which later evolved into the
Department of Energy after the 1986 People Power
uprising, was to give the popular impression that the
government could set fuel prices on its own. Of course,
it could not do so for long without harming the very
people it claims to serve. As a postscript, that
Ministry of Energy was good at something else: laying
the crucial foundations of the country’s energy
infrastructure, armed with enough foresight to develop
indigenous sources, especially geothermal, thus setting
in motion the drive to reduce dependence on imported
fossil fuels.
Back to
the futile effort to set prices: years of subsidizing
fuel prices are at the root of the government’s
budgetary woes. Deficits began to mount when the state
was made to foot a huge portion of the public’s fuel and
electric bills. Worse, stop-gap measures that the
authorities adopted to solve the daylong outages of the
early 1990s bound the country to onerous power-supply
deals, notably the notorious “take-or-pay” provisions
rammed down the public’s throat—and from which some
unscrupulous public officials reportedly make a killing.
Where
else could the government get the money for keeping
energy-hungry—but wasteful—Filipinos from taking to the
streets than through more loans and new taxes?
Despite
the passage of the Upstream Oil Industry Deregulation
Law and the Electric Power Industry Reform Act,
budgetary deficits persist. Worse, far too many
Filipinos still believe that we ought to return to a
regime of oil-price regulation—as if such a reactionary
move would banish high fuel prices overnight.
Sorting
out the mess created by shortsighted, basically
political policies in the energy sector, along with the
avarice of corrupt politicians, will need more time. But
reverting to past errors would only prolong our
collective agony.
World
crude prices have risen to record heights, but Filipinos
continue to squander imported oil and coal, as well as
our indigenous energy resources such as geothermal and
hydroelectric. For instance, the way many of us abuse
our motorized vehicles and misuse the juice from our
power grids indicates that deep down, we still do not
think that energy prices are all that prohibitive.
Otherwise, we would have been more careful in using
them—and we would be seriously developing
renewable-energy sources and devising more
cost-efficient techniques toward making energy work for
us. There is no lack of ideas and inspiration for this
tack, both here and abroad.
In
Puerto Princesa City, for example, Mayor Edward Hagedorn
has made himself the darling of the environmental
movement and, more important, his own constituents for
adopting various programs to contain the pollution and
fuel wastage caused by the ubiquitous tricycles.
Hagedorn’s city council has passed an ordinance that
aims to phase out tricycles running on filthy and noisy
two-stroke engines—thus bucking the usual defeatist
tendency of local leaders who say they can’t do anything
about pollutive forms of mass transport because they
don’t want people to lose their jobs, forgetting that
when dirty air does its worst, there’ll be no one left
to need any jobs. Hagedorn has adopted a color-coding
scheme that effectively cut the number of tricycles on
the road at any given time. More recently, he has
launched a “Trikebayan” project, which encourages
operators and drivers to shift to clean and quiet
electric-powered tricycles.
In
Israel the government has launched a massive effort to
encourage drivers to switch to electric cars, which
would reduce dependence on imported petroleum and cut
environmental and health hazards caused by oil-burning
vehicles.
In
cooperation with Renault-Nissan, the Israeli government
has committed to build the infrastructure for electric
cars that would entail, among other things, setting up
500,000 charging points and 200 battery-exchange
stations.
Israeli
authorities hacked the tax rate on electric cars to just
10 percent. In the Philippines the government cannot
even see the wisdom of reducing the tariff on hybrid
cars, which partly run on electric motors and thus need
comparatively less fuel than their gas-guzzling
counterparts.
As for
the source of the electricity to charge automobiles,
wind and solar-power farms have been shown to be
sufficient to meet the demand in a growing number of
countries.
The
first electric vehicles took to the road over a century
ago, but initially inappropriate technology and the oil
lobby made sure that most of the world’s automobiles ran
on gasoline or diesel fuel. However, as the age of
fossil fuels approaches twilight, harnessing
alternative—and, just as important, renewable—energy
sources becomes imperative.
All this
and more could be replicated in the Philippines if only
the authorities exercise genuine leadership and lead the
nation through a challenging future where oil and other
fossil fuels could only become scarcer. Instead, the
impression we get is that of a government without the
faintest idea of what to do.
In a
presummit interview, Energy Secretary Reyes was quoted
saying: “We don’t want government prescribing solutions
without hearing out the people involved. We want members
of industry, the exporters and the transport sector to
air their problems. We’re also inviting legislators to
involve themselves in this exercise.”
After
mouthing all the politically correct buzzwords to create
the notion of a caring, consultative administration,
Reyes merely gave us a preview of what to expect from
next week’s energy summit.
Rather
than a high-level meeting that would announce a paradigm
shift and draw a road map to our energy future, it will
inevitably turn into a gabfest. Lots of opinion. Little
resolution. |
