BANI—This small town of only about 48,000 people could soon become the province’s center for renewable energy. The indications are there.

A Japanese company is now measuring wind velocity here in preparation for its plan to build windmills and at the same time, a Spanish firm is ready to conduct a feasibility study for the construction of a plant that will produce biomass energy out of farm wastes.

Both these environment-friendly projects are in line with the goal of this second-class municipality to become a “Green City” by year 2020.

A third green technology to be explored by the town is the massive planting of sorghum, after rice, for ethanol fuel extraction from its seeds.

With Mayor Marcelo Navarro Jr., a retired police general, at the helm since 2007, Bani is eyeing to develop not only green energy but also green agriculture and green architecture.

“This is our vision,” said Navarro, a graduate of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1972, who has just been reelected as mayor for a second term of office.

Navarro said the Japanese firm, More Energy, has already set up a tower on a hillside in Sitio Ulanen, Barangay Dacap Sur facing the South China Sea where it installed an anemometer for measuring wind velocity.

In partnership with Nippon Steel, one of Japan’s industrial giants, More Energy has been sending technical men here for at least a year now for the planned windmills, which could generate 30 megawatts of electricity, just enough to supply the existing needs of Bani which is only 29 megawatts.

Each windmill tower will be capable of generating at least l.5 megawatts of power. More Energy plans to build at least 20 windmills.

More Energy said the town is ideal for wind power as it stands as an entry point of wind stream from the South China Sea before it crosses western Pangasinan.

ICE PLANT

The company will be back soon to discuss the viability of an ice plant to be powered by wind energy, a livelihood component of the project.

The planned ice plant will be located at Sitio Ulanen, a scenic fishing village where offshore fishermen land their catch daily.

The water for the ice plant will come from a free-flowing spring in Sitio Ulanen that does not dry up even during summer.

Navarro said they envision Bani to eventually become a fish port soon.

The ice plant will be a grant to the municipality by More Energy but the windmills will be constructed under the Build-Operate-Transfer scheme, covering a 15 to 20 year operation agreement before the turnover to the town.

Comparing it with the windmills in Bangui, Ilocos Norte, Navarro said the latter uses technology from the 1980s where the structures are 60 meters high and each with a blade of 40 meters. The Bani windmills will be more modern and smaller at 12 meters high and each with a blade of only five to six meters long.

It will be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia and only the second in Asia, after similar projects in Japan.

BIOMASS

Meanwhile, the Global Engineering of Spain, through its local partner Phil-Bio, a company that caters to green energy, will soon conduct a feasibility study for the construction of two silos, each as high as a three-storey building that could produce biomass energy.

The mayor said the Spanish company already released 190,000 Euros (Php11 million) to finance the study.

Global Engineering, a quasi-private company in Spain, said the silos can also be used for drying 500 tons of rice per day, aside from heating the boiler to produce steam that will power the turbine connected to a generator.

At least 15 megawatts can be initially produced by this technology, which will be the first of its kind in the Philippines.

The company already built prototype projects in Mexico, India, and some countries in South America and Africa.

Navarro said the company will buy all the hay stock, rice husks, woods chips and corn cobs within a 90 kilometer radius from the plant site, thus giving farmers additional income.

Though the technology requires burning, it will not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that will contribute to global warming unlike in open pit burning.—LM

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