Web Admin Advisory

This is to apprise all essay writing participants that we have scheduled the Awarding Rites on October 14, 2010, with tentative venue at New World Renaissance Hotel in Makati City.

We will notify the winners soon.

Since the nomination for our selected winner to an overseas conference will  not go along anymore with the deadline for the World Energy Council (WEC) conference in Canada, we are taking the option of sending him/her to the Climate Change Conference in Mexico this December or a nomination to the WEC Program for Youth, which is also overseas. We will correspondingly make announcement on that too during the awarding rites.

                                                   --- Essay Writing Secretariat

Believing in the immense potential of the next generation in helping shape the country’s energy future, the institutional and corporate partners of the Essay Writing Contest for College/University Students have introduced two Special Categories that aims to dig deeper into the ideas of the youth on how the country would be able to move forward from the vicious cycle of energy crisis and how this vital sector can contribute in the preservation of the environment and into abating climate change risks.

The two Special Categories revolve on the sub-themes: “Strategic Measures in Ensuring Success of a Competitive Electricity Market”, advocated by institutional partner Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC); and “Clean Energy Solutions”, which is supported by the Aboitiz Power Corporation. They were launched last June 11, 2010 at the Bryant George Hall of the Eduardo Aboitiz Development Studies Center in Cebu City.

In view of the latest developments, the organizers have decided to move deadline of submissions to July 31, 2010 (details are provided in the Contest Rules). The awarding rites will be scheduled August this year.

De La Salle University students out to make a mark in the field of solar energy technology could not have chosen a better partner to build SINAG. SINAG, the Philippines’s first solar car, was developed by dedicated and talented university students, in cooperation with what has become the Philippine Solar Car Society.

The massive restructuring in the Philippine electric power sector presents downright challenges with new dimensions. Chiefly for the distribution utilities (DUs) which are the industry’s so-called frontliners, the battle chant is “improvement in customer service”.

Of course, no one is under illusion that to be imbued with responsibility of having direct contact with customers, especially in an industry so economically- and politically-charged would be a joyride. When there are sentiments frayed, in no doubt, there may be more drawbacks than one can imagine.

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Mindanaons are angry that the administration has not been able to anticipate the crisis which had been foreseen by several experts. Now a state of calamity in Mindanao has been declared but many fear that this would give the administration reason to exercise emergency measures that may not be sustainable. In fact, senatorial candidate Joey de Venecia blames the administration for its “unexcused failure to put in the required base load capacity.” It also puts the blame on El Niño instead of looking at other factors such as its inability to plan ahead of time. What could have been done, he said, is to have invited foreign and local suppliers for the needed emergency generating sets instead of resorting to negotiated contracts, a common practice in the past.

A policy paper prepared by former Energy Secretary Francisco L.Viray and Myrna Velasco on “Crafting Energy Policies” for the Unicef-Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication publication, “The Future of Filipino Children,” examines some realities and alternatives. They note that although we are urged to shift from fossil fuels (coal and oil) to cleaner energy sources such as biofuels, renewable and nuclear energy, the reality is that oil, coal and natural gas remain the most abundant energy.

Rotating brownouts during sweltering summer months. Electricity price spikes at the spot market. And yes, there’s a Department of Energy (DOE) that failed in planning. Familiar scenes? Well, that was the State of California in the past decade before it hurtled into its monumental power market deregulation failure.

Now, the same events are being relived in Philippine shores. But if it is any stroke of luck, the local power industry appears more resilient, and fortunately, still has the room to save its deregulated market from teetering to failure.

On the night of October 8 last year, 23-year-old Norma Sapao lost six members of her family to a massive landslide triggered by a week of continuous, heavy rains that swept through their mountainside village of Little Kibungan in La Trinidad, Benguet.

To Sapao, whose two-year-old son was plucked out alive after being buried in mud and piles of debris for seven hours, the tragedy could be a freak of nature—a tragic event that could hit the unlucky, the unsuspecting.

“It’s horrifying and sad,” says Sapao. “I lost my family, my home was reduced into a pile of debris, and we have nowhere to go until now.”

How can something which is primarily used to generate electricity entice travelers that they will go out of their way just to see it?

Or to be more specific: who would have thought that the windmills of Ilocos Norte, which now supplies 40 percent of the electricity needs of this northern Philippine province, will become a major must-see site?

The coastal town of Bangui is not that accessible, you need to have your own vehicle to go there. And yet, hundreds of tourists have come and gone, not just for some beach bumming, but also to take photos of uhmm…. a windmill?

Never before has humanity faced such a challenging outlook for energy and the planet. This can be summed up in five words: "more energy, less carbon dioxide". To help think about the