PE2, CCC team up for local energy efficiency push
(PE2 Note: Jed Macapagal of Malaya Business Insight reports on PE2’s recent meeting with CCC to explore ways of supporting DOE efforts to accelerate energy efficiency deployment.)
THE Philippine Energy Efficiency Alliance (PE2) recently met with the Climate Change Commission (CCC) this month to explore ways to work together to support the Department of Energy (DOE) in enabling energy efficiency as a climate change mitigation strategy.
Alexander Ablaza, PE2 president, told reporters over the weekend that this move is crucial as over 200 countries have also supported a global consensus to double energy efficiency progress on the road to 2030.
He cited the International Energy Agency’s projections that by doubling the reduction of energy intensities to 4 percent in the next five years, the world would be on the pathway toward reducing today’s energy use by 8 percent and still energize a global economy twice as large and with two billion in population growth by 2050.
“In every clean energy roadmap, just energy transition, decarbonization and net zero conversation, we need to deploy energy efficiency and conservation at a much larger scale compared to renewables and bridge a wider investment gap through 2030 to 2050,” Ablaza said.
“All energy end-users in the Philippines should be part of a societal transformation toward a decarbonized and a less energy-intensive economy through 2050,” he explained. “We should support DOE in steadily improving the awareness and compliance of commercial, industrial, transport establishments, households, small businesses and even Government entities with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act.”
PE2 also reiterated its projections that if the economy succeeds in mobilizing P12 trillion in energy efficiency investments through 2040, the country could expect to shave off 182 million tons of oil equivalent in energy consumption and in turn, save over P36 trillion in energy purchases. While doing so, it can avoid 1.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions, and defer over 45,900 megawatts in energy infrastructure upgrades.
Additionally, the local energy efficiency industry is also seen to be able to generate incremental gross domestic product, and create some 9.1 million green jobs through the next decade and a half.
In the meeting, Robert Borje, CCC vice chairman and executive director, said that they have already reaffirmed the Philippines’ dedication to climate action through green economic pathways.
Borje explained that a rapidly changing economic landscape and technological innovations exert increasing pressure toward the adoption of energy efficiency as it needs to be embedded in consumer behavior.
“We’re underappreciating the contribution of energy efficiency,” Borje pointed out. “If we don’t work on it, then we would not be optimizing opportunities to reduce carbon impact of not just government and organizations but of the entire economy. We cannot merely rely on renewables to decarbonize the energy sector. We need to go through the process of strengthening energy efficiency as an equally important pillar of the country’s climate change mitigation strategy.”
