Cleaner energy a ‘challenging’ feat

PROVIDING more and cleaner energy is not impossibility yet a challenging act, according to a Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. top executive.

“It is not an impossibility. It is challenging. It is difficult,” Pilipinas Shell President and Chief Executive Officer Cesar Romero said on Wednesday, adding “there are pathways in which it could be solved.”

Speaking in a panel discussion at Asian Forum on Enterprise for Society 2018 at Conrad Manila, Romero securing more and cleaner energy would require extensive and exhaustive collaboration across consumers, industry, and government.

“There are plausible pathways in which it could be solved. But I’ve said it’s not going to be easy... the infrastructure we have now built over two centuries is quite efficient in its own right. It happens it did not take as much of the CO2 science when it was being developed,” he added.

Romero noted one of the dilemma confronting everyone is how to provide more and cleaner energy to these people who still don’t have access to the most basic energies.

“How do we provide more energy, cleaner energy in a manner that is sustainable, in a manner that is affordable and in a manner that allows us to have a planet that is sustainable for all,” the Pilipinas Shell executive emphasized.

He also mentioned about a billion of people all over the world without access to energy, with further one million have unreliable or worse unsafe access to energy.

In the Philippines alone, data by the National Electrification Administration (NEA) show that 19,740 sitios still have no access to electricity as of February this year.

Of this number, 8,535 are in Mindanao, 6,541 in Luzon, and 4,664 in the Visayas.

NEA and electric cooperatives in the Philippines aim to energize 1,817 sitios this year: 560 in Luzon, 552 in the Visayas, and 705 in Mindanao.

Both the government agency and power co- ops have vowed to finish rural electrification by 2022.

JORDEENE B. LAGARE