Download - A Project in Economics 4
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
1/15
A Project inEconomics
A Thesis About the Energy Crisis in the Philippines
Created by:
Jordan Jay-R N. Jacinto & Kyle Hubo
IV Excellence
Submitted to:
Ms. Mercado
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
2/15
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. Power Crisis
III. The Causes of Power Crisis
IV. Comparison
V. Solutions
VI. Conclusion
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
3/15
Introduction
Our country today is facing a major problem: Energy crisis.
Most of our people have been affected because of it, most
especially because of the rising prices of electricity bills; which in
turn caused poverty, so our people had no choice but to tighten
up their belts and make up for their minimum wages.
This is one of the main reasons why the authors of this study
chose this topic.
What they had to do first to make this study is to find and collect
articles in the internet regarding this grave situation. The next
step is to study and evaluate data from the articles, then write the
main topic, and in the end review the whole thesis and do it all
over again.
The process is quite long, but in the end they learned a lot of
things, and in turn opened their eyes about what their country is
currently facing.
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
4/15
Power Crisis
The demand for electricity today is quite daunting, and it still gets
far more worse each year. The country is largely affected and
devastated - it caused a shortage of supply of electricity, the price
of electricity bills rose, and lastly, caused a lot of power cuts. As
you can see in the figures 1.1 and 1.2 below, the country's
electric consumption continues to rise each year.
Figure 1.1
Figure 1.2
Year
Electricity -consumption
Percent Change
2003
42,040,000,000 kWh
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
5/15
2004
42,040,000,000 kWh 0.00 %
2005
46,050,000,000 kWh 9.54 %
200
6 44,480,000,000 kWh -3.41 %200
749,750,000,000 kWh 11.85 %
2008
47,040,000,000 kWh -5.45 %
2009
47,040,000,000 kWh 0.00 %
2010
48,960,000,000 kWh 4.08%
(Source:
http://www.indexmundi.com/philippines/electricity_consumption.html )
The causes of Power Crisis
There are many causes why this situation has happened. The
following causes are:
1.) Overpopulation
2.) Not enough reserves in power plants
3.) Insufficient funds
Overpopulation
This is one of the causes of the power crisis. That's because the
bigger the population, the bigger the demand for their needs, and
one of this is the need for electricity for their everyday lives. It
says right in the CIA World Fact book that we are the 12th most
populated nation in the world. They've also estimated that thepopulation of the Philippines by July 2010 was 99,900,177. So
having a big population in a country is a big nuisance.
Not enough reserves in power plants
http://www.indexmundi.com/philippines/electricity_consumption.htmlhttp://www.indexmundi.com/philippines/electricity_consumption.html -
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
6/15
Since Philippines is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the country
frequently faces a lot of typhoons every year. Because of this,
power plants placed everywhere in the country gets damaged a
lot more easier. So if a power plant ever gets broken, or needs
some inspection or repair, there should be another workinggenerator, wherein it has sufficient energy to replace the broken
power plant. But the problem is, most of the Philippines'
generators doesn't have enough reserves, resulting in brownouts.
A good example for this situation is the typhoon Ondoy. Most of
the country's generators were broken and heavily damaged - it
resulted in mass brownouts throughout Philippines. Reserved
energy is most required in this dire situation from the other
working power plants. But there weren't enough reserves to
match the required grade, so others still experienced brownouts.
So the Government thought of making a system called "rotating
brownouts", where every place in the country will experience a
brownout, in a specific time and day.
But there's a huge setback. Many businesses were affected
because of it, since there's no electricity. Many, or almost all of
the businesses today use electricity because of our perpetually-progressing technology today. So if there's no electricity, the
country's economy will be greatly affected.
Insufficient Funds
Unlike before, our country faces another grave problem - lack of
funds. This means that it'll be harder and will take longer to fix a
power plant or even buy a new one. This is one of the reasons
why we couldn't upgrade or fix most or even all of our powerplants and generators. We couldn't even give our power plants
proper service, we couldn't give its workers proper knowledge and
insight about power plants, and scarcity of spare parts of the
power plants so that it'll be repaired and improved more quickly
and easily.
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
7/15
Comparison
The two monstrous countries China and United States had the
same problem too. The two countries suffer from Overpopulation,
where according to an estimate by the US Bureau of the Census
based on statistics from population censuses, China had the most
biggest population, having 1,338,612,968 citizens, while United
States was at the third place, having 307,212,123 citizens.
Even though China and United States face overpopulation, they
managed to solve the problem itself. As one can see, China andUnited States' Electricity Consumption (Figures 2.1 and 2.2) rises
up rapidly each year.
But in figures 3.1 and 3.2, their Electricity Production goes up too.
So why does that happen?
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
8/15
Figure 2.1
(Source: http://www.indexmundi.com/china/electricity_consumption.html)
Figure 2.2
(Source:
http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/electricity_consumption.html)
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
9/15
Figure 3.1
(Source:http://www.indexmundi.com/china/electricity_consumption.html )
Figure 3.2
(Source:
http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/electricity_consumption.html )
http://www.indexmundi.com/china/electricity_consumption.htmlhttp://www.indexmundi.com/china/electricity_consumption.htmlhttp://www.indexmundi.com/china/electricity_consumption.htmlhttp://www.indexmundi.com/china/electricity_consumption.html -
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
10/15
So how did they do it? Both countries invested in using renewable
and sustainable energy. One of the key factors is that both
countries invested in solar and wind energy. Both countries have
decided to do that since sources of energy like coal and oil aren't
renewable. Studies even say that we only have 44 years until allof our oil reserves are used up. So they've decided to enhance
their technology in generating renewable energy resources so
that they wouldn't face any other problem in the future. It is
recommended that our country does that too, but many problems
obstruct the path towards the progression of our economy. Our
country doesn't have enough funds, and that would take a lot of
time.
Although United States haven't been able to solve it yet, China
has a way to lessen their overpopulation situation. They created a
law called Two-Child policy, wherein every family in China is
only allowed to have two children. If a family had three children,
the third one will be added to their taxes. Although the policy has
been discussed lately the in the Philippines, some still consider it
as anti-family - the Catholic Church even said that it violates
religious and spouses' freedom.
Solutions
1.) Use Solar energy. Since our country is near the equator, it's
always hot. That's the reason also why we only have two seasons.
There are a lot of vacant lands in Philippines, so it's possible to
install solar panels in places like in provinces, where there's
usually no electricity.
2.) Fix the Law regarding the proper payment of taxes. This isbecause many of the country's citizens tend to break this law -
this tends to makes us look bad in the eyes of the people in other
countries. When it comes to other countries like the United States,
tax evasion for them is a big no-no. It is being shunned upon by
many of its citizens; they even consider it a bigger crime than
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
11/15
stealing or even murder. So if ever possible, make the penalty for
tax evasion deeper. Death penalty would even be considered for
this, since many today do it; but then again, we can't since it's too
much.
3.) If ever possible, create open policies and tax exemptions for
foreign investors, so that they may be invited and encouraged to
give money to our country. Philippines today lacks foreign
investors, especially in the Electrical Generation Plant sector, so it
is a must that the country must have more foreign investors to
make a big progress in the development of our country.
4. Use wind energy. Collecting it isn't only limited to windmills
and such - there are many ways to do it.
Taken from the Biofriendly blog
(http://biofriendly.com/blog/energy/wind-energy-8-ways-to-collect-
it), This highway turbine was thought up by an Arizona State
University student. The turbines are designed to pick up wind
generated from passing cars. Since the turbines are placed over
the freeway, cars passing underneath will be traveling 65-70 mphon average which will allow each turbine to produce approx 9.6
kWh of energy annually. Thats enough to light up a small
apartment or help power the street lights on the freeway . This
would be useful in such highways like NLEX and SLEX, where
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
12/15
hundreds of drivers bypass the highways everyday. Funding it will
surely not be a nuisance for the Government, as those highways
are privately-owned, meaning that the Government doesn't own
them a private company does.
Taken yet again from the Biofriendly blog, they also use the wind-
energy that they are generating to power the street lights that
they're attached to. It's similar to the highway turbine. Although
the Wind Powered Light may take a lot of funds and time to
create, it will surely help our country a lot.
5. Take advantage of renewable energy resources, so it would be
recommended to invest in build special structures for its
generation.
Oil is uniquely versatile and as a result powers almost all our
machines. Oil-powered vehicles transport and produce our food.
Oil-powered machines are our only way of life that we have
known for many years. Clearly, we are living in the age of oil, but
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
13/15
that age is rapidly drawing to a close. There is only sufficient oil to
last 44 years if oil production stays constant until it is used up. As
oil reserves become depleted, there will be less which will make
keeping production constant impossible. Likewise, there is only
enough coal to last 133 years and only enough natural gas to last
61 more years. Certainly by now, everyone realizes that gas and
oil will become expensive and scarce within the lifetimes of our
children or their children. There will inevitably be a transition to
more renewable energy sources. That transition may be
haphazard or planned it is on us to decide. So while we maystill have some time left, it is a must for us to invest in building
specialized structures so that we may be able to sustain our
Economy.
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
14/15
Conclusion
It was an eye-opener for the authors. They've discovered that the
Philippines' citizens , most of the time wouldn't solve their own
problems. Its citizens tends to complain about it but they
wouldn't do a thing about it. Most of the time they simply wait for
someone to solve it, and they would call him/her a hero/heroine.
It's quite sad that even although Filipinos are hard-workers, they
also tend to complain a lot, and that they need an iron fist just for
them to work hard. Also, most of its citizens needs to be taught a
thing or two about discipline; most of them don't follow the law.
Today crime is wide-spread there's not a night where a crime or
two doesn't happen. Some do not even care much about paying
taxes; unlike in America, where tax evasion is being shunned
upon those who do it.
Yes, the authors may have learned that Filipinos are stubborn,
undisciplined, and tends to complain a lot, the authors
themselves learned something from them they smile in the most
dire of situations. They've discovered that although Philippines
have faced a lot of grave situations, they've always managed to
solve it - its citizens never frown when they experience problems.
All that they simply need is a little nudge to get them back on
track. The Filipinos are simply like sheep if they don't have a
shepherd, they scatter away. They are near-sighted, so they need
guidance and protection from their shepherd. But every now and
then they shouldn't rely on their leaders too often they too must
-
8/7/2019 A Project in Economics 4
15/15
also learn to stand on their own feet. Relying on a leader, even to
the extent calling him/her a savior, is too much. The Philippines'
citizens must just wait for salvation to come they must reach for
it themselves. They must trust in the Lord Almighty for the
guidance to reach their goal. After all, Kung may tiyaga, may
nilaga.