Asian Energy Advisors

The Masinloc deal fails to close … again. And PSALM begins singing the same psalm .. again. And I keep hearing the same question: why are electricity costs so high in the Philippines.

MIT Professor John Ehrenfeld in his discourse on “Beyond Sustainability – Why an All-Consuming Campaign to Reduce Unsustainability Fails”, states:

As a society, we are addicted to solving our problems through a reductionist frame. When we confront problems in the world, we chop them into small pieces and give each piece to a specialist familiar with that chunk. Over time, as we have done this more and more, so competence to address the complex, messy problems we confront has diminished.

This is part of the trap the Philippines has fallen into starting in the mid-1990’s. The other part of the trap has to do with a point Seth Goodin makes:

It’s essentially impossible to become successful or well-off doing a job that is described and measured by someone else. [e.g. development funding agencies]

The problem of lower electricity costs in the Philippines must be conceptualized in a manner that includes the “thoughts, beliefs, and values” of the people.

We can actually begin today by first “bringing destructive patterns into view, raising them from the unconscious corner to which they have been sent hopefully out of view like a poor relative to be shunned.”

Constructive approaches “begin with responsible, ethical choices in every day life that help develop right habits and mind sets.”

Then and only then do we proceed with creating an evocative vision of where our possibilities lie in energy and then on to the replacement of the structures and strategies that have kept us spinning in circles.

And all that, in part, is what the weblog will address.