By Myrna M. Velasco
Lopez majority-owned Energy Development Corporation (EDC) garnered “Bronze” recognition under the Carbon Disclosure category of the 5th Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards (ASRA), which is famed as the most prestigious award-giving body on reporting.
EDC President Richard B. Tantoco
With this addition into the company’s laurels, EDC President and COO Richard B. Tantoco asserted that “by sharing our environmental impact in our annual performance reports, we hope to encourage more companies to also find ways to lower their carbon footprint and be part of the world’s solution to climate change.”
He emphasized that even if “global carbon emissions con¬tinue to go up, we strive to maintain our carbon neutral operation by investing only in low carbon energy sources like geothermal and through reforestation.”
The ASRA winners have been selected from 461 entries that were submitted from 16 countries in the Asian continent. Then the award-giving body shortlisted 80 companies from 13 countries in the finals spread across 19 awards categories.
Given the persisting coronavirus pandemic, the ASRA awarding rites that was broadcasted live from Singapore, was considered a unique one, because it was virtually attended by 200 senior business leaders and sustainability professionals from 15 countries; as well as dignitaries from the academe, advocacy organizations, embassies and trade associations; and it has the Swedish Ambassador to Singapore H.E. Niclas Kvarnström as Guest of Honor.
EDC has been touted as the country’s largest renewable energy company with 1,475 megawatts of aggregate installed capacity, that in turn generates 37 percent of the Philippines total renewable energy. Its geothermal power generation portfolio at 1,181MW has the lion’s share of 61 percent in the country’s total geothermal installed capacity.
The Lopez-led firm is similarly a trailblazer in reforestation initiatives – managing roughly 1.0 percent of the country’s forests via its BINHI reforestation program.