The Philippines could get 57 to 60 percent of its energy demand from renewable energy projects by 2040 through different strategies like carbon taxes and RE subsidies, an international study revealed.
In a report by Business Mirror, researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said that the energy mix in the country should be diversified in order to meet the demand, and minimize import dependency on fossil fuels.
“Without diversification, fossil fuel dependency will grow sharply, by an average rate of 7 percent per year, and CO2 [carbon-dioxide] emissions could amount from 43 million tons in 2014 to 144 million tons by 2040,” Alam Hossain Mondal, a researcher at IFPRI, said in the report.
The study showed that through carbon tax, and subsidizing renewable energy investments may divert the country from its fossil-fuel dependence, meet its power demands, and cut its CO2 emissions by 50 percent.
It added that long-term costs of pushing for alternative energy projects cost less than maintaining current high levels of dependency on fossil fuels.
For instance, a scenario where a tax of $10 per ton of carbon emitted would be imposed by 2020 and with an increasing increment of $10 per decade will shrink
“Diversifying the Philippines’s energy supplies could, therefore, help to increase capacity and alleviate many of the developmental challenges posed by energy instability,” Mondal said.
The research published by IFPRI assesses the feasibility of four alternative-energy development strategies that will diversify the country’s energy mix and to meet its future power demands, between 2014 to 2040.
“Each of the alternative policy options we examined has implications for energy costs, energy requirements and the environment. All these considerations must be weighed carefully to create a plan for investing in the Philippine power sector for long-term sustainability.”
