The Aboitiz Group finally added a geothermal powerplant to their stable of power plants in the country when they won the bid to operate the governments 458 MW Tiwi-Makban Geothermal plant.

They edged out the Lopez Group’s bid of $368.44 million with their own bid worth $447M. The Aboitiz group have long since said that they are positioning themselves to be the premiere clean energy producer in the country by tapping renewable energy sources to fuel their power plants.
Read the rest of this entry »

Police chief Senior Supt. Gilbert Cruz of the Makati - Philippine National Police (PNP) said that they have started feeding their diesel patrol vehicles with biodiesel from Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) donated by restaurants. 40% of the fuel from their tanks will be composed of the WVO biodiesel.

WVO biodiesel is biodiesel created from used cooking oil. The processing of WVO has additional steps because the oil is tainted with animal fats, water and other impurities when it was used in the cooking process. It usually requires an ample amount of cooking the WVO before dropping the catalyst in order to melt the hardened oil as well as to evaporate the water found in the oil. I think one way to reduce the cost of heating the oil is to use natural means, such as solar cookers.
Read the rest of this entry »

According to Former Department of Energy (DOE) secretary and current chairman of World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines (WWF) Vincent Perez Jr, there are about $850 Million worth of Renewable Energy projects awaiting the passage of the Philippine Renewable Energy bill.

The Projects on Hold are:

1. Geothermal - 20 megawatt (MW)-project in Nasulo, Dumaguete; 50MW in South Cotabato; 50MW in the Bicol area; 20MW in Mabini, Batangas; 40MW in Compostela Valley; and 40MW-project in Biliran.
2. Wind - 80MW and 40MW projects in Ilocos Norte.
3. Solar - 10MW solar energy project in Mindanao, worth $50 million.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an interesting development on the Aboitiz’s Tamugan-Suawan Hydro Project. The DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau has put on hold the ECC permit of the project due to the current tiff between Aboitiz subsidiary Hedcor and the Davao City Water District.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading in the news about a company that was offering a rain water catchment and processing facility for would be buyers. This just got me thinking, is our air so polluted that we can’t even drink God given water from the clouds anymore?

My Dad worked in the island of Mindanao in the early 50’s. He was a teenager then and he contracted and suffered a severe bout of amoebiasis. Mindanao at that time was a forest, not really much development. So electricity and potable water wasn’t available yet at that time.
Read the rest of this entry »