By Alexander Villafania

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines may be fighting China in its bid over the disputed Spratly Islands but the country may someday become part of the mainland.

A scientist from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said the archipelago is moving towards the Asian mainland by approximately seven centimeters per year.

However, it would take another 50 million years to reconnect with the mainland. The Philippine landmass is situated on its own tectonic plate, ostensibly called “Philippine Plate.”

It is also surrounded by four other plates, the Okhotsk Plate to the north, Australian Plate to the south, the Eurasian Plate to the West and Pacific Plate to the east.

The Philippines broke away from a super continent called Rodinia about 1.1 billion to 750 million years ago.

Yumul explained that the breaking up of continents was due to a phenomenon called Super Continent Cycle where the Earth’s continents alternately merge into a single supercontinent, the splits into numerous continents, then merge again.

The Super Continent Cycle is estimated to span 300 to 500 million years.

DOST Undersecretary Graciano Yumul, Jr. said during the recent Earth Sciences International Conference that the one of the indicators of the Philippines’ movement towards the west is the presence of an old submerged railroad off the coast of Cavite.

Another is an old artesian well off the waters of Mindoro Island.

“These scenarios corroborate our researches on tectonic movement since nobody would put neither a railroad nor a well into the sea,” Yumul explained.

But while it may seem that the Philippines is moving towards the same country that is fighting for the Spratly Islands, Yumul still joked that with that happening, Filipinos would not need to have their own visa to visit China.

DOST-SEI

EIGHT teams from seven schools in the Philippines are now gearing up to battle it out with over 1,000 students from 32 countries to conquer the 2009 World Robotics Olympiad to be held at Pohang City, South Korea.

Forming the Philippine contingent are Philippine Science High School – Bicol Region and Science and Technology Education Center for the Regular Category – High School Division; Claret School of Quezon City and Grace Christian College for Regular Category – Elementary Division; Dr. Yanga’s College and Makati Science High School for the Open Category – High School Division; and Grace Christian College and First Asia Institute of Technology and Humanities for the Open Category – Elementary Division.

The said teams won in the recently concluded 8th Philippine Robotics Olympiad (PRO) held at SM North Annex Bldg., Quezon City.

Science Education Institute Director Dr. Ester B. Ogena congratulated all the teams that joined the PRO as she expressed optimism that the winning teams would do great in the international competition.

“Our students have shown their best and given more opportunities like these, we could tap more potential in the field of robotics,” she said.

Ogena said SEI supports participation in competitions like the PRO and WRO to open up the students’ eyes to the world of science and encourage them to venture into careers in science and technology.

“SEI will provide more support to our students who are joining these prestigious competitions so that they would acquire skills for robotics which could be tools for honing their talent in science and math,” she said.

The students in the open category would be competing under the theme: “Artist Robots,” a synergy of artistry, ingenuity and scientific flair that would show their talent, especially in the field of Science and Technology.

In the regular category elementary division, robots would be doing the Iron Robot Triathlon where a robot carrying one ping-pong ball from start area passes through the labyrinth and grey floors up to the base camp where the robot shoots the ball.

In the high school division of the regular category, robots would be competing in the Robot Match wherein a robot follows the obstacle way till mission point and then gets as many ping-pong balls as possible and then travels back to the base camp following another obstacle course.

The PRO is done in partnership with Felta Multi-media, Inc. and the Department of Education.

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.NET

In the aftermath of perhaps the worst typhoon that struck Metro Manila in recent years, environmental groups are blaming climate change for the effects of “Ondoy” (international name “Ketsana”).

In different statements, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace warned that such a disaster could be repeated unless comprehensive measures are taken immediately.

Greenpeace, in their statement , reiterated their call for industrialized countries to put in money to fund climate change measures especially in disaster-prone countries, including the Philippines.

Greenpeace Climate and Energy Campaigner Amalie Obusan said in a statement that the disaster in the Philippines had to happen in between two international climate change meetings, the recently concluded G20 Summit and the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Summit.

“While world leaders are pussyfooting on their commitments, countries like ours are left to experience the ravages of climate change,” Obusan said.

In a separate statement, WWF-Philippines Vice Chair Jose Lorenzo Tan is calling for the reduction of fossil fuel consumption, which is being blamed for contributing to climate change.

Tan said the country is not equipped to take the brunt of another similar disaster and so measures must be taken to help mitigate its effects.

“Planning must start from scenarios of the future, rather than from the present. Collectively, we must identify ‘next practices’, because today’s ‘best practice’ will no longer suffice. We must start small, learn fast and scale rapidly,” Tan said.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) reported that Ondoy dropped the heaviest rainfall in Metro Manila in recent history, a record 34.1 centimeters (13 inches) of water in less than six hours.

The previous record was in 1967 with 33.4 centimeters of rainwater over the course of 24 hours.

By Dennis Posadas

THERE are interesting developments in Chinese cleantech, and I will
discuss some headlines of interest that have been reported recently.
While I will continue to write about Philippine cleantech efforts in
renewables and energy efficiency, it is also important to take note of
what is happening in the region, and maybe some implications for us.

The first is a news report in the New York Times that First Solar, a
company that makes thin film solar photovoltaics, bagged a contract
to build the world’s largest solar installation in Mongolia. The rated
capacity of the solar plant will be 2GW (or 2,000 MW if you prefer),
and will be built using the non-silicon technology of First Solar.
Thin films like Cadmium Telluride are typically deposited on surfaces
like glass, and do not require silicon. The upside of thin films is
that you can make it into windows and basically coat a building with
it, at a cheaper price. The downside is it is only around 7%
efficient, as compared to 11% efficiency of silicon-based solar
photovoltaics, which means you need more cells and you need more space
(e.g. land). Another is that Cadmium is poisonous, and so while there
is no danger of leaching for the active life of the solar cell, the
cells have to be disposed of properly once these are past their useful
life of around 25 years.

The implication for us is that this particular project, because the
winner was a thin-film solar technology (which we do not make here as
far as I know) did not result in additional business for the local
Philippine operations of SunPower and Solaria, which make
silicon-based photovoltaics. However, if the 2GW China project is an
indication of future opportunities, maybe it will be good for the
industry as a whole.

The second, featured in both in MIT Technology Review and the New York
Times, is what the Chinese are doing with clean coal. It appears that
most of the plants being built in China these days are advanced
technology clean coal plants, which do not burn the coal directly
(which releases carbon dioxide) but instead, using an old pre World
War II process, converts coal into synthetic gas (similar to natural
gas). China has the world’s third largest coal reserves, after the US
and Russia. US Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu has
promised to prioritize its adoption in the US as well. It is important
to stress that while the carbon dioxide emissions have been cut by a
large percentage, these new plants still emit carbon dioxide.

The Chinese have even built a small experimental plant to remove the
carbon dioxide from power emissions, and use it for softdrinks
carbonation. What a creative way to do carbon capture and storage!
Store it in our bodies when we drink it. Of course, we will eventually
release it back to the atmosphere. But seriously, the Chinese are also
looking at Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), although I have not seen
any major advances yet in China in this arena. The implication here
for us is that if the Chinese can develop a better way, or an
alternative to CCS that cuts carbon emissions of coal, then maybe coal
can have a second life, particularly since we have a lot of it. But
that is, in my opinion, still in the realm of research. I do not
expect to see carbon capture and storage in the Philippines for a long
time; it is still very, very expensive, unless someone comes up with a
breakthrough.

In wind, China has doubled its capacity in the past few years and will
become the world’s largest market for wind equipment. Interestingly
enough, India, through a company called Suzlon Energy (you may have
seen their commercials on CNN) is now giving US and European wind
players like GE and Vestas a run for their money. Locally, I think we
should pursue the development of micro-wind and micro-hydro systems.

In electric vehicles, Fortune recently did a profile on a company
called BYD (Build Your Dreams) which Warren Buffett recently invested
in. In solar photovoltaics, Suntech, a Wuxi-based company which was
started by local government funds is now one of the largest solar cell
manufacturers in the world. The key learning for us here is that
Suntech was started by Chinese local government funds, not even
national government funds. The figure mentioned in Fortune was $4m,
which is doable even here. Maybe that is a learning we can use, but I
am not sure if local laws will permit that.

Finally, the UK Guardian recently reported that US President Barack
Obama may be in China this November to sign a major US-China cleantech
alliance accord, prior to the December Copenhagen climate summit.
While it is hard to convince the US Senate, which has to contend with
a strong oil, gas and coal industry lobby, to go green, it appears
that the Chinese see green as a way, not just to improve their
worldwide image in the climate arena, but to actually make some
serious green (as in greenbacks) out of it.

The question there is where does that leave us?
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Dennis Posadas is the editor of Cleantech Asia Online, and the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009)

By Dennis Posadas

While I appreciate the enthusiasm that groups like Greenpeace and WWF about enabling as much clean/renewable energy as we can put into the system, given that we have a new renewable energy law, there are also a few mindset changes we need to put into place. I am all for renewable energy; however, as a trained engineer, I also realize that there are some hurdles that need to be overcome.

First is, some renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, while abundant, are also intermittent. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. On the other hand, cogeneration and biomass plants, which are clean sources, can be stable if enough heat or biomass material is forecast and planned. For solar and wind, if we want to use it for 24×7 use, we need to make sure that there is an energy storage mechanism of some type. The most common energy storage device is of course a battery.

For bigger solar and wind systems, running in the megawatt range, batteries would have to be connected together, so it probably won’t be practical. Concentrated Solar Plants (CSPs) that employ banks of mirrors in the desert use some type of liquid like molten salt. Another possibility is to use pumped storage, like in Lake Caliraya. When power is available, it is used to pump water up an elevated lake. During nighttime, the lake water can be released to drive a generating turbine. Other schemes involve compressed air (in the US), or as in the case of some wind systems, natural gas turbines. But for many systems, the storage technique they employ is to simply connect the renewable energy system to the grid.

Now as we increase the percentage of renewable energy systems that connect directly to the grid, we have to remember again that these are intermittent. You can’t exactly tell the sun to shine exactly at 6:00am, or the wind to start blowing at 9:00pm. So there has to be a way to prevent blowups of circuit breakers or fuses, a way to plan when each energy source will come on stream. There is a role for software and intelligent grid systems that work with meteorological information to determine that there is a high/low likelihood that the wind/sun will be available at a certain time. The grid itself, and components will have to be redesigned to take into account the higher occurrence of intermittent turn-on and turn-off of power sources, many of them being renewable. Appliances may need to have chips in them, telling them that the power at a given hour is mostly coming from renewable sources, or not.

Meralco’s plan, for example, to offer Internet over broadband lines, is indicative of this. The common perception is that they plan to mainly utilize this to offer broadband services to the public through their power lines. Actually, it is not as simple as that. The Internet over power lines can also be used to command and control equipment, such as chillers in malls, to turn on or to idle at a certain time. The grid needs to be intelligent, to handle the intermittent nature of clean/renewable energy systems.

There will be a lot of new capabilities, already being experienced in places like California and Europe, that we will soon have here. Our electric meters (“kontadors”) for example, will run backwards and forwards. So if we decide to install solar panels or wind turbines on our roofs, not only can we be consumers, we can also be mini power producers supplying to Meralco. The amount we sold, is then subtracted from the amount we consumed.

The more citizens and private industry, as well as government, invest in these mini and private renewable energy systems, the less need there will be for big, and often carbon emitting power plants. In other words, power generation will be decentralized to many small renewable power producers, as opposed to a few large ones. Now who will pay for that? Some cities in the US consider solar panels as part of the house (roof) and allow citizens to simply add a little extra to their real estate tax, and amortize the solar panels over 25 years. The payment can actually be taken from the savings generated by the panels, so in effect a no-cash out scheme is feasible.

Are we ready for that?

We all want reduced carbon emissions. But we don’t get there by simply joining token Earth Hour or Earth Day celebrations. We also need to do some work, and take the time to educate ourselves.
___________________________________________________________

Dennis Posadas is the editor of Cleantech Asia Online, and the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009)