The Philippines is rich in renewable energy sources like the wind, hydro and solar, allowing the country to explore renewable energy projects that can provide power to thousands of homes.
Since the passing of the Renewable Energy Act of 2008, the RE sector has grown over the past several years. As of April 2016, over 1, 000 MW of renewable energy projects have been installed under the feed-in-tariff scheme while 2, 500 kilowatts have been installed under the net metering system. The 150-megawatt Burgos Wind Farm, one of the biggest wind farms in Southeast Asia, can generate up to 370 gigawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power two million households.
Here are other facts about renewable energy you may not know:
- Renewable energy emits little to no waste products like carbon dioxide or other pollutants.
- The International Panel on Climate Change said compared to other energy sources, life-cycle global warming emissions related to renewable energy, like manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and dismantling and decommissioning, are minimal.
- Natural gas emits between 0.6 and 2 pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour while coal emits between 1.4 and 3.6 pounds of CO2E/kWh. Renewable energy sources like geothermal emits only between 0.1 to 0.2 pounds of CO2E/kWh, hydroelectric ranging from 0.1 to 05, solar with 0.07 to 0.2, and wind between 0.02 to 0.04 pounds of CO2E/kWh. Energy generated from biomass has a wide range of emissions depending on its resource and the method it is harvested.
- Because renewable energy projects are often located in regional areas far from urbanized cities, building renewable energy plants in these places can utilize the region’s local services as well as promote tourism.
- Solar entrepreneurs in the country say that for every 10 MW RE plant, 1, 000 people are hired for six months and another 100 are taken employed full time.
- The International Renewable Energy Agency projects renewable energy deployment can cause general economic improvement as most economic sectors will increase their output. Among the sectors who can benefit the most from this are those in manufacturing, engineering and construction.
- The latest addition to this body of work, IRENA (2015a), estimates that the renewable energy sector supported around 7.7 million direct and indirect gross jobs in 2014, representing an 18% increase from the previous year. The figure reaches 9.2 million if direct jobs in large hydropower are included.
- Solar PV employers accounted for 2.5 million jobs in 2014 as global production of solar panels at lower costs are increasing. Liquid biofuels followed with 1.8 million jobs worldwide.