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By Paul M. Icamina, Special Reports Editor
Bangui’s is clean power, without leaking carbon dioxide, a major
cause of greenhouse gases that is blamed for global warming.
If it were powered by fossil fuel and not the
wind, Ilocos Norte’s Bangui power plant would have released the
equivalent of 49,000 tons to 65,000 tons of carbon dioxide each
year. Instead it displaces greenhouse gas emissions.
It is fitting that the NorthWing Bangui Bay wind
farm’s windmills are aligned on a 9-kilometer stretch of beach,
part of an 80-hectare foreshore land on a 15-year lease from the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
About a year after it started operations in June
2005, the wind farm was the first to register for carbon trading
with the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which
calls for a reduction of greenhouse gas.
Carbon credits assign monetary value on capping
carbon-dioxide emissions on an industrial scale. Credits can be
exchanged between businesses or bought and sold in international
markets at the prevailing market price.
NorthWind, which has no carbon emissions, may
sell the credit to factories in the West that surpass government
emission limits.
By way of example, a factory that surpasses a
government limit on emissions in a year either reduces its emissions
or is required to purchase carbon credits to offset the excess.
Although the factory continues to emit gases, it pays another
group— in this case, NorthWind—to reduce the equivalent carbon
dioxide emissions from the atmosphere for that year.
“Since Day 1 we started taking carbon credit
from the World Bank. We leave no carbon footprints,” said engineer
Dino Tiatco, plant manager at the Bangui wind farm. “NorthWind’s
commitment is to accelerate rural electrification while preserving
the environment.”
For each megawatt-hour of energy produced in
wind turbines instead of from coal or oil, carbon dioxide emissions
are reduced by 0.8 to 0.9 tons annually.
This makes wind power an attractive commodity
for sale to factories in the European Union, for example, which is
committed under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions from
1990 levels by 8 percent on average by 2012.
The NorthWind Project is also the first project
in the Philippines to have an Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreement
(ERPA) under the Clean Development Mechanism. The agreement was
signed by NorthWind and the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development through the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund.
In May last year, it became the first Philippine
recipient of a Carbon Emission Reduction Certificate from the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
With 20 wind turbines operational, the Bangui
wind farm is considered the country’s largest renewable energy
project.
The Philippines has been found to have potential
wind power of 76,600 megawatts, leading other wind power-producing
countries like Germany (14,000 megawatts potential wind power),
Spain and the US (6,000 megawatts each), Denmark (3,000 megawatts)
and India (2,100 megawatts).
The country’s energy independence agenda aims
to achieve 60-percent energy self-sufficiency by 2010 by increasing
exploration of indigenous oil and gas, aggressively developing
renewable energy potential, such as biomass, solar, wind and ocean
resources, increasing the use of alternative fuels, and
strengthening and enhancing energy efficiency and conservation
programs.
Worldwide, the top-10 countries using wind power
to generate electricity on a large scale are Germany, Spain, US,
India, Denmark, China, Italy, United Kingdom, Portugal and France.
Japan is on 13th place, Taiwan 23rd and South Korea 24th.
Global wind-power capacity is about 48,000
megawatts, a third of it in Europe, where wind power makes up 3
percent of the continent’s energy requirement.
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