FEF reaction

FEF REACTION: Reacting to our Postscript last Sunday on the Aquino administration’s renewable energy program, Calixto V. Chikiamco, president of the Foundation for Economic Freedom, published in the FEF website a purported letter to our editor saying:

“(Postscript) seemed to imply that certain specific individuals are responsible for (the FEF’s) position against the current Feed-in-Tariff petition of Renewable Energy Developers before the Energy Regulatory Commission.

“Mr. Ramon del Rosario Jr. and Mr. Delfin Lazaro serve in the Board of Advisers and are not in any way responsible for the official positions of the Foundation. The official position of the FEF is adopted by members of the FEF board. Thus, no single individual, particularly Mr. Ramon del Rosario and Mr. Delfin Lazaro, who are not members of the board, is responsible for the position of FEF.

“The FEF is not, repeat not, against renewable energy. The FEF is not against renewable sources like geothermal and hydro, whose generation cost are competitive with traditional sources of energy.

“The FEF is also not against the use of renewable energy in off-grid areas, where the avoided cost of using diesel is high and it makes sense to use RE sources like solar.

“What the FEF is against is forcing Filipino consumers to pay twice the cost of conventional energy from wind and more than three times the cost of conventional energy for solar by way of a forced surcharge on Filipino power consumers. This surcharge will be paid for by Filipino consumers for 20 years even if the cost of technology goes down to guarantee a rate of return of 17 percent per annum to RE developers.

“What the FEF is also against is the awarding of RE projects under the FIT system without competitive bidding. Awarding of projects without competitive bidding is against the ‘matuwid na daan’ of President Aquino and is unfair to Filipino consumers.

“To underscore the anomaly of the present FIT petition of the RE developers before the ERC, it should be mentioned that their petition for the FIT rate for solar is P17.95 per kilowatt-hour when it is only an average of P7 per kilowatt-hour in China and India.

“We hope this makes clear that contrary to the effort to paint FEF as anti-environment, the FEF is very much for economically efficient renewable energy and loves the planet as much as environmentalists do. However, it is vehemently against any attempt to exploit the Filipino consumer under the guise of saving the planet.” –Federico Pascual, Philippine Star