An active and functional collaboration between the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is being sought on incentivizing investments on the waste-to-energy (WTE) space, so the Philippines could have innovation on alternative fuel that can be used for transport – including the aviation industry; as well as for power generation.
In an interview, Ditmar Gorges, managing partner of METPower Venture Partners, a subsidiary of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC), indicated that if the two departments will work together on enthusiastically promoting waste-to-energy ventures, the Philippines will have added valuable solution to its energy supply predicaments; while also addressing the country’s dilemma on pollution.
“One thing we’ve been missing out is: we have a lot of organic wastes from the agriculture sector and also from the municipalities and we’re not using that, so the DOE and DENR shall work together to turn that into usage energy resource,” he said.
Gorges added “that’s a point where we’re missing out a little bit – we’re missing out on the potential of agricultural organic waste – the pig manure; or rice husks – we’re burning them; so instead of burning them, you can use that in a biogas plant and convert it into energy.”
He further noted “what I’m trying to get to is: the DENR has problem with all that wastes; and most of them are going to sanitary landfills…and as you know, the landfills have been getting bigger and bigger and it’s a major issue – and we’re not using these to generate energy.”
Gorges emphasized “if the two departments – DOE and DENR - could work together and make use of that collaboration in giving incentives to use agricultural wastes or municipal wastes to generate energy – then we can address not just our waste problems, but also energy supply. It’s something that’s really missing.”
In other countries like Germany, he conveyed that fuel derived from organic wastes – including those from households, are now running part of their transport system like the city buses and city trucks.
“For example in Germany, even for a pig manure or chicken manure, there is special incentive for using that in a biogas plant to generate energy – you can also turn that into power,” he pointed out.
Gorges further stated that biogas may also be upgraded to the equivalent of compressed natural gas (CNG), and that could match the quality of gas being drawn from the Malampaya field.
Citing previous studies, including the one undertaken by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Gorges specified that if all the wastes generated from the roughly 100 million population of the Philippines can be judiciously turned into energy, the potential could be more than 10,000 megawatts equivalent of energy that may be added into the country’s power supply.
He shared that at METpower, there’s already a proof-of-concept that the company can dangle which will clearly show the viability of waste-to-energy ventures, including their two biogas plants in South Cotabato that have been converting farm wastes from pineapple plantation and canneries into usable energy.
“We have two biogas plants at pineapple canneries in South Cotabato, we’re processing up to 600 tonnes of pineapple jutes and we choose to go into the landfill everyday- and we’re using that to replace pretty much all of the power needs for the boilers. And eventually, they would want to go further into fueling their vehicles, like tractors and run them on renewable natural gas – the same like CNG of Malampaya but it’s coming from organic wastes,” he stressed.