Recently in Going Green Category

By Dennis Posadas

Recently, a US based environmental group called the Center for Biological Diversity, petitioned the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clamp down on black carbon emissions. The petitioner asked the EPA to force each state with glaciers and sea ice to adopt the EPA standard on black carbon or set their own. The petitioners envision controls on black carbon emissions from diesel engines, particularly from heavy duty construction vehicles and construction equipment and vessels that traverse the Arctic, especially as the extent of sea ice diminishes.

But as John Topping Jr, President of the Washington, DC based Climate Institute (and a friend of the Philippine climate community) argues in several of his opinion pieces in Cleantech Asia Online and a forthcoming YaleGlobal piece, that a more universal way is to link black soot's climate effects to its well known detrimental health effects.

This has implications, particularly in a country such as the Philippines, as we practically breathe it in everyday.

Black carbon (or soot) is a key constituent of particulates from incomplete combustion. Previously published journal articles (Ramanathan and Carmichael, Journal of Natural Geoscience, 2008) say that the heat warming potential of soot is more than half of carbon dioxide, and its effects on sea ice and glaciers is even greater. Black soot lessens the albedo of glaciers, snow and sea ice in reflecting back solar radiation into space. Unlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, black soot only stays aloft for days to weeks, meaning that any aggressive reduction not only contributes to health, but also almost immediately to climate change mitigation (MacCracken, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Assn, 2008).

In order to understand that better, think of the huge polar icecaps of the Arctic and Antarctica as huge mirrors (white instead of silvery) that reflect back sunlight back into space. Now, as with many white surfaces when exposed to soot, these reflective surfaces blacken a bit from soot in the air and reduce their reflectivity.

Think of those reflective signs along EDSA that used to be reflective, but are now barely noticeable. When brand new, you could see them clearly, but nowadays you could be a few feet away and bump into them because of all the black soot deposits. Now think of the polar icecaps as the Earth's cooling mirrors.

Here in the Philippines, the impact of black soot is obvious. Just look around, wipe the soot in your kitchen stove area, or on your face after a day of riding public transportation, or basically just about anywhere in our major cities. Two stroke engine tricycles hauling several passengers and heavy loads, even if they are not designed for that, emit black soot among other pollutants as these are not really designed for that purpose. Poorly maintained jeepneys, trucks, buses and cars all contribute to this. Even inefficient cookstoves are a culprit to black soot emission.

While the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases needs to be worked on, in order to reduce the risk of climate change, the reduction of black soot is a low hanging fruit that even individuals can work on. Black soot reduction is quite easy to implement, it quickly produces results, not just for our health, but also for our climate, so the rationale to cut it should easily be justifiable.

To strengthen the health rationale for financing the reduction of black carbon emissions, we need to add the climate mitigation potential. As of the moment, carbon credit mechanisms do not really include black soot reduction. Financing for black soot reduction can pay for the rehabilitation and replacement of old jeepney diesel engines, inefficient tricycle two stroke engines, and the like.

As Mr. Topping recommends in his YaleGlobal and Cleantech Asia Online opinion pieces, the carbon development mechanism (a.k.a. carbon credits) should include black soot reduction in its list of fundable activities. You do something not just for climate mitigation, but also for clean air and health as well.

Dennis Posadas is the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009) and the Editor of Cleantech Asia Online (http://www.cleantechasiaonline.com). He just recently finished a new business fable on climate and clean energy.

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by Dennis Posadas The recently held GTZ symposium on renewable energy held last October 8 at the Fully Booked in Bonifacio High Street was an interesting example of how investors and the public are now interacting with our new Renewable Energy Act. The passage of the 2008 Renewable Energy Act of the Philippines has paved the way for an increase in investments in the renewable energy sector. One of the areas that have benefited is the wind energy sector. It is estimated that the Philippines theoretically has around 76,000 MW in wind energy capacity, based on studies conducted by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Philippines Department of Energy. It was reported in the Inquirer.net that the Department of Energy last September awarded three companies four new wind energy service contracts—Energy Development Corp. (PSE: EDC) for its planned 86-MW wind farm in Burgos, Ilocos Norte; UPC Asia Corp. for its 50-MW wind project in Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte; and PetroEnergy Resources Corp., which bagged two contracts for a 30-MW project in Sual, Pangasinan and a 30-MW project in Nabas, Aklan. Also, Energy Logics Philippines Inc.’s pre-commercial contract for a 120-MW wind farm in Pasuquin, Ilocos Norte, was converted to a wind energy service contract. Several joint ventures between local businessmen and foreign companies and investors have also been announced in the local dailies, among those that have been reported include the Alterenergy Partners joint venture with Eurus Energy Japan and Korea East West Power Co. to identify projects in the 30 to 40 MW range; and the French wind turbine manufacturer Vergnet Group, said to be looking for joint venture partners. The rule of thumb given is that each megawatt of capacity costs around USD $2m to 2.5m dollars. At present, aside from small isolated micro-wind installations in remote communities, the largest one at present is the 33MW wind farm in Bangui Bay, Ilocos Norte run by the Northwind Power Corporation, which contributes only 0.21% of the total electricity generated in the country, that is when the wind is blowing. The 7,100 islands of the Philippines make it difficult to make electricity available in many areas, particularly those that are isolated from the main electric grid. Most large islands with large populations, such as Luzon, Panay, Cebu, Mindanao, and others have their own generation, distribution and utility companies to service their areas. However, smaller islands with sparse populations or mountainous areas are a particular challenge. In these cases, sometimes the only practical solution is to use renewable energy power sources (e.g. wind, solar, biomass) or diesel powered generators. Because wind, like solar, is an intermittent energy source, there has to be a means of storage to compensate for times when it is not generating power. In isolated off-grid areas, for smaller wind systems, this normally means a battery. In countries like the U.S., in the Texas Panhandle for example, T. Boone Pickens’s backup of choice is a natural gas turbine. But for the Philippine setting, the typical approach much like in most countries is to simply connect these large wind systems to the electric grid, and to simply sell power to the grid when it is generating. Anyway, just like in the U.S., the Philippines operates a spot market for electricity. In the case of renewable energy, a special spot market for renewable energy has been developed by the Philippine government to guarantee that there will be buyers for producers of renewable energy electricity. One concern of some investors is the limit on foreign ownership. It is defined in the Philippine constitution that in certain key industries/sectors, foreign ownership is to be a minority, with a slight majority going to a Philippine partner. For some investors, it is not an issue, but for some it is. As former Energy Secretary and now Alterenergy Partners CEO Vince Perez mentioned during the GTZ symposium, at the moment the only choice is to look for a trusted Philippine partner to work with. Another concern is in the way the public may perceive the Feed-in-Tariff, which is a key subsidy mechanism to attract investors to invest in renewable energy in the Philippines. During the Ramos administration, the government suddenly had to build power plants to meet a large capacity shortfall, and to do this, they had to entice investors with a ‘take or pay’ scheme meaning that even if the power was not being used, electricity utilities and therefore consumers had to shoulder part, if not all, of the cost of the unused generated power. There was such a big public outcry, especially in this country where the ‘cheapest power possible’ mentality rules, that it will sometimes if not always be difficult to pass measures that subsidize for example, renewable energy. Just like the personal computer and the semiconductor industry, renewable energy requires a steady market in order for private sector technologists to be attracted to constantly improve it. Unfortunately, the appetite for renewable energy seems to be correlated with the price of oil. If oil is cheap, the appetite for renewable energy disappears and vice versa. The Feed-in-Tariff hopes to counteract this tendency. Personally, most people would like to see renewable energy succeed in the Philippines. The severe flooding brought about by typhoon Ondoy has brought home more awareness of the need for low carbon energy sources. Supporters of renewable energy hope that electricity consumers will actually step up to the plate and pay a little extra for renewable energy through the feed-in-tariff, in order to increase the returns for the companies and investors that go into this sector, already saddled by high upfront capital expense costs for wind (currently $2.5m per MW) and solar (currently $2/watt for silicon based photovoltaics and $1/watt for less efficient thin film based photovoltaics) and the threat of cheap oil. Besides, electricity consumers in the Philippines already pay a foreign currency adjustment charge for imported oil used in power generation. There is no reason why they should not accept a feed-in-tariff adder, given that they will no longer need to pay the foreign currency charge for that portion of the electricity bill. Otherwise if consumers do not agree to pay the piper, then coal, the current king of the hill in terms of price, will really become entrenched as the power source of choice. _________________________________________________________________________________ Dennis Posadas is the editor of Cleantech Asia Online, and the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009). He is is currently working on a new business fable on climate change and clean energy.

MAURICE Malanes of the Philippine Daily Inquirer Northern Luzon Bureau talks to Victor Ayco, a Filipino chemical engineer and inventor, who is not worried about the current oil crisis. In fact, he sees this as an opportunity to explore alternative sources of fuel with the help of science. Malanes finds out that Ayco has found vital clues to creating a gas-saving product, thanks to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Excerpt:

A scientist and inventor, Ayco sees the crisis as an opportunity for the country to tap the inexhaustible potentials that science can offer in finding alternatives to fossil fuel. “Many seem to anticipate a bleak future because of the prospect that one day the world’s fossil fuel deposits will finally run dry,” says Ayco, 70. “But fossil fuel is not the only source of energy that can run engines of cars and other machines. There are other inexhaustible alternatives [to fossil fuel].” He based his radical optimism on what he regards as a vital clue from one of the geniuses of the 20th century -- Albert Einstein. That clue is the theory of relativity, or E=mc², where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the velocity of light. The Mandaluyong-based chemical engineer says Einstein’s theory helped him perfect his gas-saving product, which he demonstrated recently before Baguio City motorists. Essentially, Einstein’s relativity theory, says Ayco, states that “from matter we can produce energy.” His invention called “aero-nitro power injector” took 15 years of research and experiment. Patented on Dec. 11, 1985, the device has been marketed only recently through Energy Philippines Inc., a private firm, which Ayco co-owns with other partners. The inventor says his device “converts ordinary nitrogen (a noncombustible substance) in the atmosphere into combustible nitro-gas, and serves as gasoline and diesel additive in gaseous form for efficient engine combustion.” With efficient engine combustion, a vehicle can run more kilometers with less fuel and emits almost zero toxic pollutants.