Tail Winds

When Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became president of Philipines in January 2001, she searched for dynamic young Filipinos with successful international careers who could bring that expertise home to serve their country. Vincent Perez was one of those she found.

            An MBA graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Perez at the time had amassed 17 years of experience in the world of international banking and finance. His background included rough-and-tumble experiences with Latin American credit and debt restructuring during the currency crisis in that region and later dealing in debt trading, capital markets, and private equity in emerging countries from London, New York, and Singapore.

            Coming from the world of international finance, Perez did not make a comfortable landing in public sector. The energy secretary’s portofolio was riddled with crisis. The war in Iraq was raging, quadrupling the price of oil for the import-dependent Philipines, while power shortages antagonized a public already agitated about the state of the country’s energy supply. Perez served as energy secretary from 2001 to 2005 and estabilished a reputation as a champion of clean, renewable energy. Since leaving public office, Perez has been serving as a chief executive officer of the renewable energy company Altenergy Partners. He also an investor in NorthWind Power, the first commercial wind farm in Southeast Asia. In addition, he is chairman of the environmental organization WWF-Philipines.

            Within 2 months of his appointment as energy minister, the president asked each cabinet member to conceptualize and develop a poverty alleviation program in their respective department. He felt, after a lot of internal discussion, that the key poverty program to promote should be rural electrification. There’s  an indisputable correlation between the lack of electricity and poverty, as well as high population growth rates, low educational attainment, and even a lack of peace and order.

            Then, He have invested in NorthWind Power , a Project in the northern philipines that is Southeast Asia’s first commercial wind farm.  That investment is credited to private entrepreneurs, Danish and Filipino, who started it. He was impressed with ther tenacity to build this pioneering project. In 2005, when this project was built, it was only viable because of soft loans from the Danish government because Danish equipment was used. Since then, turbine prices have come down and the shortage has eased, with new equipment coming from developing countries like China and India. Also, oil and coal prices have risen. That means that electricity prices have risen, so the project is quite competitive now, though it might still need a small subsidy. But the technology is now proven, and increasing the scale will further reduce costs. The project now supplies about 40 % of the energy needs of the province where it is located.

            Therefore, after seeing Philipines succeed to handle their energy sources with their new technology, I hope that we must try to follow their step to handle and managing our problem in energy sources in our country.