Restarting PH industrialization via RE dev’t

(Last of two parts)

CAN THE Philippines emulate China and India? Yes, but the National Economic Development Authority and Department of Energy must first discard their technoliberal ideologies and programs and, with the Department of Science and Technology, formulate and implement a technonationalist NREP (National Renewable Energy Program) that aims to achieve technological self-reliance, if not leapfrog to the manufacturing of solar panels and wind turbines by 2040.

This can be done through a concerted, concentrated and systematic national strategy and program that will combine technology acquisition, reverse engineering, and research and development (R&D) in next-generation or frontier RE technologies. There are certainly many exciting advances in RE technologies that the Philippines can leap onto for possible leapfrogging R&D programs.

In wind, power and solar power technologies, there are many R&D and leapfrogging opportunities that the DOST, DOE and Philippine universities can explore. Among these are (a) bladeless wind turbines such as the one invented by David Yanez of Spain, which can withstand and harvest the powerful energy of typhoons, (b) new solar cells such as polymer solar cells, thin-film solar cells, and transparent solar cells and (c) new energy storage technologies such as aluminum-graphite batteries, aluminum-air batteries and super capacitors.

As a first step toward an alternative technonationalist NREP, the Philippine government should delineate a Renewable Energy Technological Innovation System (Retis) that will involve major organizations relevant to RE development such as the Neda, DOE, Department of Budget and Management, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Trade and Industry and the Commission on Higher Education, as well as Philippine universities. Retis should be a cohesive, synergistic innovation system for generating leapfrogging innovations in renewable energy technologies.

Next, the government should energize and mobilize the Retis to formulate and implement a Renewable Energy Technology Roadmap that will chart the requisite RE technology acquisition projects, targeted manufacturing capabilities, RE industries to be created, the targeted RE technological leapfrogging innovations, the supporting R&D projects, and the needed resources and policies to accomplish all these on a year to year basis all the way to 2040.

The RE revolution offers a fresh start for the country to attain energy security and catch up technologically, build up its manufacturing industries and restart its stalled industrialization drive.

To be able to do this, however, the government must throw overboard its technoliberal policies of depending on foreign MNCs to develop RE and, instead, adopt technonationalist policies of pursuing technological self-reliance, and leapfrog in RE technologies.

Mathews is a professor of Strategic Management at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia while Posadas is the executive director of research and innovation center, Lyceum of the Philippines in Gen. Trias, Cavite, Philippines