Rage to the Dying Coal Industry: Meralco’s push for coal in Quezon and Cebu is a financial suicide, will further burden electric consumers

Media Communications
Nov 28, 2024
2 min read

Fossil fuel giants trying to pull the coal industry away from the death’s door is such a waste of time, effort, and resources. With the Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen) crowing about spending at least $2 billion(1) to develop coal-fired power plant expansion projects in Atimonan, Quezon and Toledo, Cebu, climate justice groups and communities affected by fossil fuel projects will not waver in campaigning against these dirty sources of energy; as coal must be left to die.

Local banks are moving away from coal. Philippine banks are publicly announcing their commitments to stop financing greenﬁeld coal projects, according to recent reports(2). Although the government is trying to make fossil gas happen(3), we are placing equal attention to coal as we look forward to it breathing its last.

While MGen said that the existing 82-MW coal-fired power plant under Toledo Power Corp. had previously secured permits to construct two units, it is very much worth noting that it is included in the dirty projects that made Compliance Advisor Ombudsman declare an investigation to World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) for indirectly funding fossil fuel projects. This is CAO’s response to Philippine Movement for Climate Justice’s complaint(4) against the IFC as fossil fuel projects continue to endanger our communities’ lives and livelihood.

Resurrecting the coal industry can’t be done as communities fiercely fight against it, despite harassments and hardships. Last September, Toledo residents voiced their opposition(5) to Aboitiz Power’s subsidiary Therma Visayas, Inc.'s coal plant expansion via a petition, urging the company to comply with the law by conducting health impact assessments as their community's health is on the line.

Communities in Atimonan are also not backing down to these coal projects. While MGen is saying that the proposed coal plant expansion is included in the committed list, it is proved to have violations done during the permitting and construction process.

PMCJ argued(6) that when MGen was planning to construct the expansion, through its subsidiary Atimonan One Energy (AOE) Inc., in 2021, the Department of Energy had already implemented a coal ban late in 2020. The coal ban bars the processing of new applications for greenfield coal facilities, such as AOE's.

Moreover, AOE’s proposed coal project’s permit is already abandoned since MGen planned to build it as a fossil gas facility last 2023(7). These fossil fuel giants exhaust ways, even going back-and-forth, switching coal to fossil gas, and back to coal, just to push for their dirty projects, at the expense of people’s welfare and the environment.

We condemn these pushes for debt-creating, planet-killing, and disease-causing projects as communities and organizations have been laying-out comprehensive plans for the just transition to clean energy. We call for the planned and managed phaseout of coal and other fossil fuels, and support and invest in renewable energy projects.

#EndCoal #RenewableEnergyNow #StopFundingFossilFuels #ClimateJusticeNow