The US/Israel campaign (read: war) against Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah is pushing energy problems to the hilt. Fuel costs have gone almost unbearably high.
The war has escalated as Iran is attempting to widen the theater with hits on oil-rich and oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (known for its LNG or Liquefied Natural Gas). Other Middle East nations have been drawn into it. This means more expensive fuel for our vehicles and energy costs to power up residential homes and workplaces.
Developing countries like the Philippines have to brace for stratospheric energy costs.
There is an alternative to oil-based power source -- waste-to-energy (WTE).
BACKYARD SOURCE. Imagine powering your home with the garbage your neighborhood throws away every single day. No new oil wells. No imported fuel. No waiting for some distant technological breakthrough. Just waste — the one thing we will never, ever run out of — turned into clean, reliable, and more affordable electricity. It is right at our fingertips.
That future isn’t a fantasy. It’s already running in Singapore, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Seoul, and dozens of other developed cities around the world. And it’s coming to the Philippines.
I’ll be honest — I should be rooting for anyone, anybody, any group who would opt and push for this one energy source. Why?
At a time when electricity bills are squeezing Filipino households and our streets, rivers, and dumpsites are overflowing, waste-to-energy (WTE) technology feels more like an answered prayer. So let me address some of the fears I’ve been hearing, because I think once people understand what this technology actually is, they’ll want it in their backyard — not away from it.
THE CAPAS PROJECT. In Tarlac province, there is a proposal to put up one. It is being pushed by the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) and the consortium of ATD Waste to Energy Energy Corp. Global Heavy Equipment and Construction Corp., and India-based Uttamenergy Ltd. formalized their contract of lease for a four-hectare property in New Clark City (NCC) in Capas town.
It will be a 12-megawatt facility that could power up 10,000 homes via 600 metric tons of wastes. This is a huge P4-billion large scale sustainable energy project that, aside from helping solve energy problems, would also create jobs.
This project, however, is meeting some opposition from some officials of host Capas town. The municipality has had its own share of bringing to fore its indignation in the past. I remember that previous town officials also put the BCDA to task when NCC was still being built in 2017. They grilled BCDA executives in sessions of the Sangguniang Bayan (town council). The worthiness of the project was weighed in well.
The result? There is now a work of wonder in place at NCC – the stadium, athletes village, aquatic center, the national government administrative center which Capas proudly hosts and sort of “own” as it resides within its territorial jurisdiction.
Governor Christian Yap who I once talked about this WTE project is under the impression that Capas folks do not really oppose it but just want an adjustment of its proposed location. I believe the BCDA can make a compromise.
I hope this impasse is resolved soon on this project which the Department of Energy endorses and considers to be vital in the mix of renewable sources under the Philippine Energy Plan of 2023-2050.
Besides, this project was part of the investment deals secured by no less than President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. himself when he visited India in August last year. He witnessed the signing of agreement for this project.
Opposing one Palace-backed project as huge and as beneficial as this one may just be unsavory, if not unwise.
POLLUTION. Here’s the thing about modern waste-to-energy plants: they are among the most tightly regulated industrial facilities on the planet. Multi-layer filtration systems — scrubbers, fabric filters, activated carbon — capture the pollutants people worry about before anything reaches the air. The European Union, home to hundreds of these plants, has found that properly operated facilities emit a tiny fraction of what their own strict standards even allow.
Meanwhile, the open dumpsites and burning garbage piles many of us live near right now? Those are the real polluters. We’ve been tolerating the dangerous version for decades. The clean version is what’s coming.
TECHNOLOGY. Seventy years. That’s how long controlled thermal waste-to-energy treatment has been in continuous operation around the world. There are over 2,000 facilities running today — in Japan, Germany, Sweden, South Korea, Singapore, and beyond. Copenhagen built one so impressive they put a ski slope on the roof. Singapore runs one on an island you can see from its beaches.
These aren’t developing nations crossing their fingers on an experiment. These are the most technologically advanced, environmentally demanding countries in the world — and they chose this. The technology has been proven, refined, and trusted across generations of engineering. We are not early adopters. If anything, we’re fashionably late to something very, very good.
COMMUNITY CONCERN. Studies across Europe and Asia consistently show no significant health risks from properly built, operated, and monitored WTE facilities. And here’s the bigger picture: developed nations didn’t just build these plants and walk away — they built them in the middle of cities, near schools and neighborhoods, because they knew the science was sound and the benefits were real.
What harms communities today are landfills that leak, illegal dumps that spread disease, and garbage that has nowhere to go. Modern WTE facilities were built precisely to fix that. Enclosed systems. Continuous monitoring. Strict standards.
Then there’s what people don’t talk about enough. What this actually delivers: Less waste sitting in landfills; More stable, locally generated power; Jobs during construction. Long-term employment after; and, a system that doesn’t collapse every time waste volumes increase.
Even the by-products don’t go to waste. They're reused in construction materials, such as fly ash and bottom ash. In other words, this is about converting waste from a liability into an asset.
This is our moment. President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. administration’s Kalinisan sa Bagong Pilipinas Program is a national call to reimagine how we handle waste — and waste-to-energy is one of the most exciting answers to that call. NCC is poised to show the rest of the country what’s possible: a city that turns a waste management problem into an energy solution, lowers the cost of electricity, and builds a cleaner environment for the people who live and work there.
The world’s most progressive cities figured this out decades ago. They didn’t wait for a perfect moment. They built the future and moved into it.
Now, it’s our turn.