Philippines: Sustainability


By: Joseph Seabra
The Philippines which as mentioned before is a nation that I trying to rapidly grow within the areas of infrastructure and technology, could benefit highly from implementing sustainable technologies within the country. When considering the different sustainable technologies that could be put in place many of these technologies such wind turbines, and solar panels take up large amounts of useable land for both agricultural and commercial purposes. Though one sustainable technology that has rapidly spread in use over the last few years is that of wave energy generators, which are placed in the ocean off the coast of a country. These technologies have spread rapidly throughout the South-West Pacific due to the number of island nations that are present in that area. Due to the technology’s implementation near a body of water the Philippines could utilize this technology seeing as it is a geographically divided nation.
According to the (EIA) Energy Information Administration it is estimated that approximately “2.64 trillion kilowatthours” which is the “equivalent of about 64% of U.S. electricity generation” was generated in 2018 (2019). This means that there is a large amount of under-utilized energy that is not being harnessed to serve as a new source of technology that could serve as the forefront for countries with large stretches of coastline. The Philippines as mentioned before is divided into multiple islands and because of this the Philippines has approximately 36,289 km of coastline that surround the country (2018). This amount of coastline is longer than both Japan and the United states both of which are the leading countries of hydroelectric power from waves, which was interesting to see since the Filipino government has not yet instituted this technology. 
One of the leading companies in harnessing wave power is currently is Carnegie Clean Energy which had led the development in technology for harnessing wave power with the development of its CETO technology, The latest wave harnessing device that Carnegie has developed is the CETO 6 which according to the Carengie Clean Energy website “provides emissions free sustainable energy and water security to countries & islands” while also having “minimal environmental impact” (2019).
As mentioned in previously the Philippines is a nation which has multiple limitations and barriers set in place for companies based outside of the country, which could limit many sustainable technology companies from entering the country. Though if the Filipino government was to institute this technology within its energy grid it could serve to greatly benefit the country in reducing its emissions while also allowing for an increase in the amount of arable land by placing its electrical generation facilities on its coast. Looking forward it can be assumed that this technology will not take off rapidly in the Philippines due to the many barriers of entry to outside technology companies, though if this technology is able to work its way into the Filipino market its popularity and usage would increase dramatically.

References

(2018). Countries with the Longest Coastline. In worldatlas.com. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-coastline.html

(2019). Hydropower explained: Wave Power. In U.S. Energy Information Administration. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydropower/wave-power.php

 

(2019). CETO Technology. In Carnegie Clean Energy. Retrieved October 31, 2019, from https://www.carnegiece.com/technology/

 




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