ADB raise urgency for fast-tracking greenhouse gas emission reduction

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President Benigno S. Aquino III led the inauguration of the coal-fired 300-megawatt baseload power plant located on the boundary of Barangay Binugaom in Toril, Davao City and Barangay Inawayan in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur. Many countries are waning from use of coal-fired power plant because of its carbon emission.

A new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report raised urgency for fast-tracking Southeast Asia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction, warning limited impacts of climate change arising from these discharges can already reach some 11 percent of this region’s GDP by 2100.

Launched Monday in Metro Manila, the report ‘Southeast Asia and the Economics of Global Climate Stabilization’ highlights need to mitigate GHGs as it cites the region as among areas most vulnerable to climate change due to geographic, demographic, economic and other conditions prevailing there.

The report also said Southeast Asia registered, at nearly five percent annually between 1990 and 2010, the fastest relative growth in emission of carbon dioxide, one of the climate change-driving GHGs.

“It finds that mitigation is in the region’s economic interest,” ADB Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development Vice-President Bambang Susantono said at the report’s launch.

According to experts, GHG emissions accumulate in the atmosphere and trap heat so global temperature rises, resulting in climate change.

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The 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant will not depend on renewable energy.The 300-MW power plant uses the latest Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) technology, which ensures that the power plant meets the government standards on health and protection of the environment. It also utilizes an Electrostatic Precipitator (ESP), which electrically charges and removes 99 percent of the dust, and a Continuous Emissions Monitoring System (CEMS), which monitors the emission of the power plant..

Increasing onslaught of extreme weather events as well as sea level and temperature rise are climate change’s impacts on the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries, they said.

Last year’s climate agreement in Paris targets stabilizing climate by keeping global temperature rise below 2¤C.

To help achieve such target, ADB Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management Division Dir. Preety Bhandari said the bank will double its climate financing to USD6 billion by 2020. She noted US $4 billion of such financing will be for mitigation.

Some US $2 billion will be for adaptation so countries can better cope with climate change, she also said.

The report is an output of ADB’s five-year technical assistance project ‘Strengthening Planning Capacity for Low-Carbon Growth in Developing Asia’ which UK and Japan governments co-financed.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines are countries covered in the report. (PNA)

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