CAMILLE ESQUIVEL
funding the incentives for renewable energy development and the cost of debt incurred by the government (Uy, 2016). Therefore, an analysis of policies, administration, and social landscape during the country’s first geothermal energy projects serves as a meaningful lens for understanding sustainable development as “access to affordable and reliable energy sources and services has been a necessary component in reducing poverty, increasing productivity, enhancing competitiveness, and promoting economic growth” (Mendoza et al, 2019). This research attempts to outline the overlapping government jurisdictions and policies that muddle management of land in the name of development, and seeks to understand how some of these have and continue to act as barriers to substantial improvements for local people.
THE GLOBAL ENERGY CRISIS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
In 1973, the first world oil crisis shook the global energy network, and revealed the pitfalls of oil interdependence between the Global North and South. At face value, the Arab oil embargo, gross oil increase by OPEC, and subsequent production cutbacks by Arab oil producers, forced countries like the Philippines and its Southeast Asian
counterparts, to rethink their heavy reliance on foreign imports for energy generation (Ichord Jr, 1974). During the world oil crisis, the region was highly dependent on major international oil companies from the Middle East, principally Exxon, Shell, Caltex, Mobil and British Petroleum (BP) for its energy. Even key oil producing nations in Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Indonesia, relied on the Middle East to support its domestic needs, while exporting low-sulphur oil to Japan and the United States for premium costs at the same time (Ichord Jr, 1974). In turn, countries in Southeast Asia (except Vietnam and Laos) began establishing their capacity for domestic refineries to address rising costs and established the region’s role in downstream operations in the oil industry. Despite the industry’s previous resistance to developing “export-oriented refineries,” Southeast Asia became the playground for global superpowers to explore for oil, with US companies and the Royal/Dutch Shell leading the way (Ichord Jr, 1974).
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2021
The Philippines, a 7,107-island archipelago in the Western Pacific Region, is a country that has unavoidably been under the mercy of the volatile shifts in the global energy economy even before the World Oil Crises of the 1970s (La Viña et al, 2011). In 1936, the National Power Corporation (NPC) was established to ‘construct, operate and maintain facilities for the production of electricity’ and was the dominant player holding a monopoly over the country’s energy industry until reforms began in 2001. By the 1950s, the Philippines was only at 20% of electrification across the country and in 1962, then called Philippine Commission on Volcanology (COMVOL) began exploring geothermal energy for electricity production.
