Asian Energy Advisors

The SAIS Team, NRECA, and I met with Alex Ablaza last night at the Linden Suites and we talked for two hours about CFL (compact fluorescent lighting) program issues in the Philippines. Alex had just returned from Vietnam (came straight from the airport) where he was working on an ADB engagement related to an energy efficiency funding window for multiple southeast Asian nations. They are trying to ramp up the ADB funding in energy efficiency to $1 billion per year by 2008 - they are almost already there.

Super helpful meeting for the students. Alex confirmed a lot of the emerging findings and conclusions the team was already coming to in their research regarding CFL issues in the rural areas, and he provided a wealth of new insights.

Alex is truly passionate about making real progress on efficient lighting here in the Philippines and has a vision of significant impacts. I agree with him. Alex talks of “CFL power plants” - a great concept.

Very very roughly (based on some numbers the students and I sketched out) - it looks to me that we can potentially achieve something like 8 MW per average electric cooperative, at least, in demand impacts in less than one year through aggressive CFL programs. Wow. That’s truly significant. That’s a power plant per cooperative. Alex (if I recall his numbers correctly - and I may not) is looking at about 1,000 MW countrywide. That pretty much is in the ballpark of my 8 MW per EC.

The CFL issues are not homogenous. Even if one focuses on only the residential sector, we’re finding that some of the issues in provincial areas can be much different from those in the NCR region - and there are differences even in the rural/urban areas of the provinces.

I find it all rather fascinating - but mostly because the barriers seem to be transcend-able and there is potential to actually achieve real impacts in the near term. This is not just theoretical.