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The
Senate is not keen on endorsing nuclear power, Sen.
Miriam Santiago said yesterday, even as she admitted
that senators reached a consensus to speed up the
passage of the renewable energy bill as soon as plenary
debates on the measure start next week.
Santiago,
principal sponsor of the proposed Renewable Energy Act,
disclosed at the sidelines of the Energy Summit
yesterday that she saw no problem getting the bill
passed in the Senate “because more than a majority of
the senators are themselves authors of the various
renewable energy bills.”
She told
reporters that the Renewable Energy Act is “already a
certainty in the Senate.”
Addressing conferees at the
Summit
held at the Mall of Asia complex in the
Manila Bay reclaimed
area, Santiago confirmed that the senators are not ready
to back nuclear energy.
Conceding certain advantages in the use of nuclear
energy, she acknowledged that it continues to cause
anxiety, given the problems of waste disposal, fear of
nuclear accidents and questions on the desirability of
the global spread of nuclear technologies.
“The
primary motivator for the
Philippines
to consider nuclear power is energy security and
diversifying away from fossil-power generation. But we
have to consider the true costs of nuclear energy,
because it will be reliant on state support. We have to
consider liability and antiterrorist cover, radioactive
waste storage, international monitoring, and research
and development costs,” she said, adding that she “does
not foresee a nuclear energy bill in the Senate, or a
so-called nuclear renaissance [in the Philippines], in
the near future.”
She
added that the Senate energy committee, which she
chairs, is also crafting a comprehensive legislative
agenda to address what she called “a looming period of
global energy poverty.”
“This
energy poverty is the result of high fossil-fuel prices,
the growing concern about energy security and
environmental concerns,” she said. “The rising demand,
particularly from
China
and India, has nearly doubled the price of benchmark
crude [oil], with proportional increases for natural gas
and other energy products.”
Santiago
noted that oil futures markets indicate that prices will
continue to remain within a significantly higher range
which, she warned, means that a developing economy and
energy-importing country like the
Philippines
will be among those who will be hit the hardest.
In her
speech,
Santiago suggested that the conferees at the Energy Summit reevaluate
the country’s energy policy pointing out that “in a
rapidly changing world, the very fundamentals of
energy—price, availability, security,
acceptability—stand in need of constant and careful
reevaluation.”
She
disclosed that high on the list of the Senate energy
committee are the alternative fuel bills, especially
substitutes for gasoline or diesel in motor vehicles.
Other
priorities are proposed incentives for clean-coal
technologies “because higher volumes of conventional
coal usage would greatly accelerate carbon emissions,”
she explained.
Santiago
said other priority measures due for consideration are
bills seeking to: increase the efficiency of biomass
fuel use, and promote the use of modern fuels, such as
kerosene and LPG, for meeting the cooking needs of the
poor; increase access to efficient stoves for both
biomass and modern fuels; subsidize capital costs for
rural grid electrification, and develop off-grid
solutions to providing energy services; target subsidies
to access, not consumption; remove market barriers to
trade in kerosene, LPG, biomass fuels and charcoal, for
meeting the cooking needs of the poor; and make
financially sustainable the expansion of access to
electricity by poor households. |
