Winning the war on climate change
WE DECISIVELY SHUT THE DOOR ON COAL AND NEVER LOOKED BACK NOR EVER REGRETTED MAKING THIS DECISION.
As we enter the decade of the 2020s and beyond, I’m certain it will not look like life the last few decades. In the 2020s, we will begin to feel, in no uncertain terms, the impact industrial civilization has had on the planet. I remember back in a high school Science class in the 1970s, listening to the teacher talk about climate change and the greenhouse effect. Back then it seemed like something theoretically possible, maybe uncertain in scale, and something mentally relegated to a very distant future.
But these days, we watch the nightly news and those speculative effects scientists merely hypothesized about are now unfolding before our very eyes like a biblical apocalypse. From the record temperatures being set all over the world year after year to all the one-in-500-year droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes striking everywhere with punishing regularity. The words of embattled North Carolina Gov. Ray Cooper captured it perfectly after his state was pummeled in succession with record rainfall and flooding by Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence a mere two years later in 2018: “When you have two 500-year floods within two years of each other, it’s pretty clear it’s not a 500-year flood.”
The climate crisis that’s unfolding globally is startling in the scale, intensity, and speed at which its effects are being felt. The most noticeable are extreme weather events and the strain on infrastructure that’s been designed for a world we’ve now irreversibly left behind. But other climate-related consequences will range from an increase in vector-borne diseases like Malaria and Dengue, to falling crop yields, irreversible loss of species and important ecosystems including upwards of 99 percent of all coral reefs, just to mention a few. The sociopolitical and economic consequences of all these will be staggering. We can already foresee how this will make it increasingly more difficult to lift billions of people from poverty and address growing inequality. I can already imagine the massive strain it will place on limited government and humanitarian agency’s resources.
The one million Syrian immigrants flooding Europe since 2011 were fleeing a civil war made possible by one of the worst droughts in the last 500 years. The drought of 2006 killed 85 percent of livestock and caused the failure of more than 75 percent of farms in the years leading up to 2011, forcing 1.5 million farmers and their families to migrate to urban areas in search of livelihoods that didn’t exist. Although the Syrian civil war had many proximate causes, extreme weather events like this severe drought are called “threat multipliers” which create the incendiary environment for conflict. The wave of populism and border tightening throughout Europe was heavily shaped by this mass migration. Which also raises the question: what will rich countries do as more desperate and needy communities come knocking on their doors in search of safety and security?
The World Bank and the United Nations (UN) separately estimate that there could be as many as 140 to 200 million climate refugees in the next 30 years. The high end of the UN projection fears as much as one billion or more vulnerable poor who will have little choice but to fight or flee. Syrian immigrants flooding Europe is just the beginning of a phenomenon that could be 200 times greater.
Reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) are considered the “Gold Standard” of climate change assessments but they’re somewhat conservative to a fault. Probably for good reason. However, last October 2018 they released a very important one urging dramatic action to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius if we wish to avoid a dangerous, irreversible, and game
over climate crisis which threatens humanity. It calls for cutting our current CO2 emissions to half by 2030 and down to zero by 2050. The enormity of reduction in CO2 emissions is still possible but unprecedented in scale and in the words of Piers Forster, one of its lead authors, requires us to “do everything and do it immediately.” Another lead author of the landmark report, Helen Oinnik is quoted as saying “we don’t need any fancy new technologies, but it will require unprecedented rates of transformation.” In so many words, we already have the means, we just need to muster the political will and focus to make it happen fast. It calls for a global mobilization effort that does not have any precedent historically. You cannot halfway your way to solving an existential crisis this large, and, given the time constraints, “winning slowly will be just as good as losing.”
This is why I believe we are living through one of history’s great paradigm shifts. Unbridled capitalism that spurs mindless consumerism and the mindless pursuit of growth and the bottom line above all else, has brought us to the point where on the average the world’s population uses up 1.7 Earths every year1 — way beyond our planet’s carrying capacity to regenerate (note: American lifestyles, which many aspire for, use four Earths each year). Over the last two centuries we’ve used up more than the Earth can afford. That bill is now falling due and we can no longer kick the can down the road without lethal consequences to our own children. Quite a few astute world leaders have correctly said: “we’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last that can do something about it.”
One major component of this paradigm shift is in how we use energy and how we power our lives. There’s a massive transition happening in the energy industry today, and the urgent need for low carbon power sources is being helped by the fact that renewable sources like solar and wind are getting cheaper and penetrating our lives quite fast. Over the last five years, close to 2,000 megawatts worth of solar panels were imported into the country and have probably found their way onto rooftops and grid-connected solar farms. The first quarter of 2019 alone saw more than 200 megawatts of panels come in. The use of solar PV panels is accelerating and unlike traditional power plants which take years to build and commission, it doesn’t take long for them to be installed and generate electricity. Each kilowatt of electricity generated by those panels will be one less kilowatt drawn from the electricity grid. Add them up over a few more years and it will have a profound effect on the shape of demand from traditional grid-connected power generators, both on a seasonal basis and on an hourly basis. The intermittency of electricity produced by solar and wind sources (since the sun is not always shining and the wind not always blowing) must therefore be complemented by more and more forms of energy storage and traditional generating plants that can follow these swings and rapidly ramp up and down throughout the day.
Coal-fired power plants, aside from being undesirable in a world that needs to decarbonize urgently, are not built for this type of flexible operation. Precisely why they have the highest risk of becoming stranded assets. Running them flexibly will cause thermal fatigue of components, of materials, and corrosion that negatively impact efficiency and emissions even more.
Flexible combined cycle power plants running on natural gas, on the other hand, fit this role perfectly. Today they can even beat the costs from coal-fired plants not only on a peaking and mid-merit basis but at baseload as well. All while emitting only less than half the carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour of a similar sized plant. For reference, compared to a similar sized coal plant, First Gen’s power plants and Kepco’s Ilijan plant running on Camago-Malampaya natural gas saved the country more than 12.2 million tons of CO2 annually over the last 18 years. That’s the equivalent of keeping 2.6 million cars off the road — practically the entire Metro Manila transport vehicle population each day!
Natural gas-fired power plants are a perfect low carbon complement to the unstoppable trend of more intermittent renewable energy penetrating our lives. Of course, natural gas is still a carbon-emitting power source that should no longer operate beyond the point when it’s possible to be powered fully by renewable energy with enough storage. If the stars align, that will happen way before the IPCC goal of net zero CO2 emissions in 2050.
The fury and damage wrought by Typhoon Yolanda gave the world a glimpse of what’s in store for the planet if we fail to curb global temperature rise. It also painfully demonstrated to us why we’re among the top five most vulnerable nations to the climate crisis engulfing the world. This is precisely why the Philippines cannot be a bystander in the war against climate change. One-hundred eight million Filipinos and millions more to be born have so much more to lose if this fight doesn’t go well. All of us have a duty to fight that fight.
In those crucial days following Typhoon Yolanda, the suffering from history’s most powerful typhoon became so terribly real. It devastated the lives of communities, families, and people we worked with, knew, and loved. Climate change was no longer some distant occurrence that happens to others. It’s here, and it’s hitting us now. It revealed to us the harsh limitations of any government’s ability to respond to the forces about to be unleashed, but it also revealed to us boundless wellsprings of kindness and community that will be key to our survival and resilience in the coming decades.
Our geothermal company Energy Development Corp.’s direct involvement, first as a casualty but later as a pivotal resource for the rescue, relief, and rehabilitation efforts on the island of Leyte, told us in no uncertain terms why we had to redirect mother company First Gen’s resources and growth away from coal-fired power even if it meant closing the door to potential financial gain. We decisively shut the door on coal and never looked back nor ever regretted making this decision.
The energy industry is on the cusp of great change and the country has everything to gain by building an energy industry that transitions and powers us into the challenges of a carbonconstrained world. It is precisely at junctures like these when uncommon opportunities appear but it takes uncommon foresight and uncommon courage in order to seize them. As a nation we have that rare opportunity to build not with the past in mind but for the unique needs of a very different 21st century and a very changed world.*
* * Federico R. Lopez is the Chairman and CEO of First Philippine Holdings Corporation. He is also the chair and CEO of First Gen Corporation and Energy Development Corporation — premier power generation companies at the forefront of clean and renewable energy development.