Electric bus importer seeking loans from banks

Corporate News

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Posted on August 28, 2011 09:57:19 PM

A FIRM planning to operate a fleet of electric buses has begun negotiating with banks to finance the importation of the vehicles into the country.

 

Green Frog Zero Emissions Transport will be tapping local banks for loans so it can bring in two buses before importing a second batch of 20 buses.

“Our buses will be arriving in batches. Our first batch of buses will be financed by a friendly forward-looking local private bank,” said Philip G. Apostol, managing director of Green Frog.

“[We are also] waiting for approval from PhilExim (Philippine Export-Import Credit Agency) for the loan guarantee for the next batch of buses,” Mr. Apostol added.

Together, “two banks will be tapped,” he explained.

He declined to specify the loan amount in the meantime, saying the firm is still negotiating with the bus supplier and the banks.

The company plans to import around 62 electric buses in four batches.

Of this, an initial 38 buses are planned to a portion of Makati City, mostly via Gil Puyat Ave.

The fleet is expected to be operational “before the end of 2012.”

The Energy department is pushing for the promotion of electric vehicles as part of its alternative fuels program for public transportation.

Already, the department has partnered with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to provide electric tricycles to local government units.

The local government of Mandaluyong was the first city to be given electric tricycles.

Formally launched in 2008, Makati already has electric jeepneys servicing the city.

Power distributor Manila Electric Co. also expressed interest in putting up charging stations for electric vehicles.

Mr. Apostol went on to note that the company is importing the buses even in the absence of government incentives “that should jump-start the industry.”

“[The government] should help jump-start the industry by waiving import duties for CBUs (completely built up imported vehicles) and [providing] tax breaks for manufacturing,” he said.

Mr. Apostol said the manufacturing partner of Green Frog is “willing to discuss opening an assembly plant after local demand is proven.”

Green Frog is only one of the companies looking to roll out electric buses in the country.

Transportation firm Victory Liner, Inc. earlier announced its intention to run an initial 10 buses this year which will ply routes along the C-5 highway.

Victory Liner is also planning to build its own charging stations in its terminals so it can use electric buses for its provincial routes.

The firm has said, however, that its business plan will utimately depend on government’s direction.

The firm is seeking incentives to import its electric buses and have sought the help of the Climate Change Commission to provide suggestions for perks as each unit will cost the firm about P8 million to P8.5 million. -- Emilia Narni J. David

SM Supermalls steps up efforts to reduce usage of plastic bags

Posted on August 28, 2011 09:56:34 PM

THE MANAGEMENT behind SM Supermalls is looking to reduce the retail chain’s use of plastic bags and comply with local ordinances by stepping up efforts to sell reusable shopping carriers and offering incentives, an official said last week.

SM Shopping Centers Management Corp. plans to sell one million so-called eco bags by yearend or the first quarter of 2012, Raffy M. Maglalang, SM Center Pasig mall manager and a member of SM’s environment committee said at the project launch.

While plastic bag users will not be charged an additional amount, SM Advantage loyalty card holders who use the eco bag will be given loyalty points, which in turn can be converted to discounts or give-aways, among others.

“We expect to sell more than last year because of the no-plastic bag ordinances in Pasig and Muntinlupa cities. More people will buy our eco bags. We expect our malls in those areas to follow the law and help reduce plastic bags,” Mr. Maglalang said.

In January, Muntinlupa City passed City Ordinance 10-109 to ban the use of plastic bags and polystyrene containers. In Pasig City, City Ordinance 09-2010 also banned the use of plastic and Styrofoam starting last month.

The retail giant also partnered with mall tenants Jollibee Foods Corp. and Goldilocks Bakeshop, Inc., to reduce plastic usage in their outlets. -- Franz Jonathan G. de la Fuente

Dutch treat to upland Negrenses: Flowing water

By DJ Yap
Philippine Daily Inquirer  
12:16 am | Sunday, August 28th, 2011 

His work had taken Dutch marine engineer Auke Idzenga to places that were literally high and dry, mainly the uplands of Negros. When he first got there in the late 1990s, the closest water source was hundreds of meters away from the poor villages, often requiring a trek down treacherous ravines.

But Idzenga had since led a group that not only overcame gravity but also cynicism and racial divides.

The group equipped the mountain settlements with the hydraulic ram pump, an old, nearly forgotten technology capable of bringing a steady water supply to elevated areas using only the raw power of a rushing river or stream.

Everywhere he went at the beginning of his mission, the tall and lanky Caucasian often drew curious stares from the villagers.

“But when I began talking in Ilonggo, I blended in immediately,” said Idzenga, co-founder of the Philippine-based Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. (AIDFI), one of this year’s recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Considered the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the award is being given to AIDFI (the lone recipient from the Philippines this year), as well as to five individual honorees from Indonesia, India, and Cambodia. The awarding ceremony is set on August 31 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Filipino at heart

He hailed from Holland, but the 49-year-old Idzenga said he had become a Filipino at heart, more so after he married Susan, a Negrense. Like him, their four children speak fluent Ilonggo; “no Dutch or English” spoken in their Bacolod home, he said.

“When I talk, I don’t look at myself and I don’t see my kulay (skin color),” Idzenga said. “I look at myself as an internationalist, but my heart is with the Filipinos.”

AIDFI’s development work has so far centered on promoting the ram pump, but Idzenga and the group’s 20 full-time Filipino members are also developing other self-sustaining technologies, such as one that processes lemon grass into essential oils.

AIDFI was formed in 1991 by a group of activists led by union organizer Leonidas Baterna, who shared his dreams of an “integral and liberating development” with Idzenga.
Their partnership was forged against a backdrop of social turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the sugar industry in Negros in the 1980s. Hundreds of workers and farmers were then displaced, their families sinking deeper into poverty and hunger.

Distrust, suspicion


AIDFI sought to address the basic needs of the affected farmers through agricultural production and technology development. But lack of funds and the loss of key members forced the organization to close shop after only a few years.

Idzenga said this was partly due to the distrust and suspicion among the upland villagers toward non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like AIDFI.

“We had to work really hard for funding because of the bad name NGOs got especially in Negros. In the 1980s when the programs were not implemented well, there were so many NGOs that mushroomed,” he said. “We worked without funding for many years. And there was no government support.”

At that point, returning from a brief visit to his native Holland, Idzenga worked to revive AIDFI, this time giving the group a much clearer focus on rural technology. He came up with his own design of the ram pump and had it patented.

The ram pump uses the natural kinetic energy of flowing water from rivers or springs to push water uphill, without relying on gas or electricity.

The “reinvented” pump introduced by the AIFPI to the Negros uplands can bring water to an elevated  reservoir at 1,500 to 72,000 liters per day, according to Idzenga.


Social package

The pump itself accounts for only 10 percent of the cost of the entire “social package” the group brings to the community that would avail itself of the technology.

The package also includes community consultation and technical training, ownership transfer, and the setup of local associations that would manage the water generation and distribution system, as well as financing.

AIDFI also receives donations or grants from businesses, banks and the government, Idzenga said. For example, “we’re talking with Coca-Cola about producing 50 ram pumps a year and they would be paying for them,” he said.

“Landbank is now picking up the technology and offering it to municipalities through loans. We also get some money from the Department of Agriculture for research,” he added.

While most of its projects are in Negros, up to 180 AIDFI initiatives have taken root across the Philippines. The group also managed to set up projects in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Nepal, Malaysia, East Timor, Costa Rica, Peru and even First World countries like Japan and France.

Idzenga said the introduction of the ram pump often became the “triggering point” for development in the  communities, like in the case of Sitio Anangue in Murcia, Negros Occidental.

The small village remained poor despite being placed under land reform in the 1980s, he recalled. “The road was very bad. It was very hard for the villagers to cultivate the land. There were no facilities and the community was not organized. They were very much like on survival mode; it was just everybody for himself and there was occasional conflict.”


Organized for first time

“Then we came in with the ram pump,” Idzenga said. “It was the first time the community had any organization of any sort. We completely organized the water association.”

“Then from one village, we got a request from the neighboring village. Then there was a third. So it became three sitios. There’s more cooperation because water came from the same place,” he said.

And soon, the water association in Anangue started exploring other development projects, he said. With the households paying P30 per month for the water, the community found itself with enough funds to go into hog raising and cash crops.

“In the past, this kind of thing never happened in the community. Now they have started cooperating. Now they start thinking of further development,” he said.

City dwellers tend to take water for granted, he said. But in the uplands, “you have to imagine how the people have to go down 80 meters (to fetch water), every day. Try it yourself and carry 40 liters of water on your back.”

“Sometimes kids missed classes because whenever their parents went down to fetch water, the kids would just end up playing and forget about school,” Idzenga said.

Affectionate people

Idzenga said he was drawn to the Philippines as a young man of 22, after hearing many stories about the country when he was still working as a seafarer.

After two decades of living in the Philippines with his family, he said, “I don’t know the difference anymore between living here and in Holland. Everything here is normal for me now.”

Filipinos, Idzenga said, are an affectionate people. “The first thing they do is look at the color (of my skin), but then when we start talking, they warm up and connect. They keep on coming back to talk. It becomes a friendship. Very warm.”

Because of this connection, he said, he had taken great pride in improving the lives of the country’s poorest, especially in places hardly reached by government services.

“The fact that we can bring up water at such volumes for every family, and they don’t have to go down the mountain anymore, that’s a huge, unbelievable transformation,” Idzenga said.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award, Idzenga said, would give his organization a bigger voice for its advocacy.  “It fits in our highest objective, which is to spread the (ram pump) technology all over the world. Winning this award will help us reach more villages,” he said.

PCCI hits focus on renewable energy

Says PH needs baseload plants, lower power rates

By: Abigail L. Ho
Philippine Daily Inquirer  
9:31 pm | Sunday, July 31st, 2011

PCCI: Bring electricity prices down first before burdening consumers again with FIT rates for renewable energy projects.

The government should find ways to drive current electricity prices down before introducing another burden to consumers and industries through the feed-in tariff (FIT) rates for renewable energy projects, the influential Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry said.

PCCI energy committee chairman Jose Alejandro said power rates were expected to increase even more next year due to the expiration of the transition supply contracts (TSCs) attached to the privatized plants and independent power producer (IPP) contracts of National Power Corp.

“Can we expect that the new contracts that will be negotiated will have lower rates than the old TSCs? Of course not. We expect the new rates to be higher,” Alejandro said in an interview Friday.

These would be further exacerbated by petitions by Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. for the universal charge, as well as the generation rate adjustment mechanism (GRAM) and the incremental currency exchange rate adjustment (Icera), automatic adjustments that could move rates either up or down.

The introduction of the FIT rates for renewable energy projects would add another burden to consumers and businesses, Alejandro said, making the country even less competitive on the global stage.

“We’re already charging too high for power. It would have been okay if we were just one or two centavos higher than our neighbors, but our rates are double or even triple those of other countries in the region. We can’t have any more increases,” Alejandro said, referring mainly to the FIT rates.

The FIT scheme assures renewable energy developers of future cash flow as electricity end-users will be charged fixed amounts to cover the production of energy from renewable sources.

Payment for the use of clean energy will come from a uniform per-kilowatt-hour charge, dubbed FIT Allowance (FIT-All), which will be collected from all electricity end-users.

The National Renewable Energy Board recently approved a FIT rate of 12.75 centavos a kWh for renewable energy projects. This universal levy would be borne by all power users by 2014, when all expected renewable energy projects would have already gone on line.

Instead of pushing to get renewable energy projects on line, Alejandro said the government should focus on getting more commitments for additional baseload generation capacity.

At this point, Alejandro said, the country already had enough renewable energy capacity from its numerous hydro and geothermal installations. Some projects such as biomass and mini-hydro could be installed in off-grid areas. Solar and wind, however, should take a backseat—at least for the next three to five years.

“Our priority should be building baseload and reserve capacity and bringing power rates down. We need sustainable, reliable power supply. We don’t need [renewable energy] now. It’s not reliable, it’s not controllable, and it’s very costly,” Alejandro said.

“It will be counterproductive for the country to focus on [renewable energy]. Let the technologies mature first, but in other countries, not here. We can still catch up, especially when the technologies become much cheaper to install,” Alejandro added.