Partido Reporma presidential candidate Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson and running mate Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III on Friday, March 4 said they welcome President Duterte’s new directive to include nuclear energy in the country’s energy mix.
Lacson and Sotto said they also want to push nuclear energy as an alternative power source.
Nuclear energy is the cleanest and cheapest form of energy that would benefit Filipino consumers the most, they added.
“Mura kasi pagka nuclear energy but then, ito ‘yung hindi natin naha-harness e (Though nuclear energy is cheaper, yet we have not harnessed it),” Lacson said.
Lacson and Sotto III toured Sorsogon in their Bicol campaign swing Thursday, escorted by no less than Governor Francis “Chiz” Escudero.
“Yes, we support the proposal of the President,” added vice presidential bet Sotto, the chairman of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) to which Escudero, who is running in the May 9 elections to return to the Senate, is also a member of.
Lacson added: “Alam niyo ba na ‘yung power sector, 57 percent (doon) ‘yung coal-fired (Do you know that in the power sector, 57 percent {of producers} are coal fired (power plants)?. Napakamahal ng coal kasi nanggagaling pa sa Australia, kasi ‘yung local coal natin dito hindi tama ‘yung BTU (British thermal unit), hindi sapat. Twenty-one percent renewable kasi nagpasa kami, nandoon pa si Senator Chiz ‘non, ipinasa namin ‘yung Renewable Energy Act (Coal is so expensive because it comes from Australia, our local coal does not have the proper BTU, it’s not sufficient. But the power sector should be made up of 21 percent renewable because we passed, and Senator Chiz was still there, we passed the Renewable Energy Act.’’
The law, also called Republic Act (RA) 9513, provides incentives for renewable energy producers, Lacson said. This includes no VAT (value added tax) for several years and tax holidays, especially for solar, biomass, and geothermal power producers.
The Philippines is the second largest producer of biomass in the world, yet Lacson said the irony of it is the country is just harnessing 1.2 percent of its energy needs from it, which he said was a waste.
Overall, apart from the 57 percent of its energy needs through coal fired power plants, the country gets 21 percent from renewable sources and 19 percent from geothermal energy, the three-term senator added.
The top consideration in using nuclear energy, Lacson said, is its safety, considering the Philippines is the country fourth most-vulnerable to the effects of climate change, according to a recent report by a United Nations Development Programme.
‘’We have many that we can harness, and nuclear is also one (of them)... Our main consideration there is safety, because – we are on the earthquake belt and all that,’’ he noted.
‘’If we go nuclear, we just make sure that what happened to Chernobyl (a nuclear power plant meltdown in Ukraine during Soviet times), and what happened in Japan (in Fukushima in 2011 owing to an earthquake and tsunami) doesn’t happen here. That’s the number one concern we’ll have when we go nuclear,’’ the former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief stressed.
The Philippines finished building the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 but never fueled it, in part because of the Chernobyl disaster and the People Power Revolution that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ordered it built in 1976.
With a final cost of $2.3 billion, the BNPP was also opposed by anti-nuclear activists into the 1980s.
The Corazon “Cory” Aquino administration that followed Marcos never used it, citing construction safety and corruption issues, as it would also account for 10 percent of the country’s external debt.