Living in a More Resilient Philippines with Sustainability Solutions

The Philippines is centered in the ring of fire and typhoon belt. This makes my beloved country very susceptible to natural disasters. According to DW.com, in the article, Philippines: A country prone to natural disasters, there are approximately 80 typhoons that occur above tropical waters, and 19 of those affect the Philippines alone. Just this year, the country has experienced several storms and landslides, especially in the Northern Luzon area. These several disasters have cost our country not only lives but livelihood and dwellings as well.

In my article, The Philippines’ Decaying Agriculture Industry, I mentioned several other factors that affect the industry and why we import products like rice instead of exporting them, but I didn’t get to dwell more on the environmental impact of it, which I will attempt to do so in this post.

Because of these problems facing our country, there is a huge need for solutions to better our living since we cannot control our climate. As a third world country, it’s despairing and has always been a massive disadvantage to us citizens that our primary energy sources aren’t subsidized by our government. Hence, our electricity costs continue to rise, and energy deficiency is commonplace.

Enter BPI’s Sustainable Energy Finance Program

It’s a great thing that several entrepreneurs are devoting their time and effort to not just better themselves, but also address problems facing our country and its people. These people help us find solutions to our everyday problems. One of them is BPI and the people behind the Sustainable Energy Finance Program (SEF). The BPI SEF program helps entrepreneurs identify opportunities for energy savings, choose the appropriate technology for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, and of course, as a bank, help the businesses fund these projects.

The main problem for small, medium enterprises and some government units that help us citizens is the lack of financial support for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Aside from that, many of those enterprises are not aware of Sustainability. The BPI SEF helps these businesses by raising awareness with regard to energy consumption and sustainability. Applying Sustainability techniques and strategies with the use of technology can help these businesses minimize their losses, increase productivity, serve more people, save business expenses, and ultimately, gain more profit because that’s what business is about, in the first place.

Here are several of BPI SEF’s Success Stories:

Wait, you might think that this is only for the betterment of the businesses, but I blogged about this because it is a win-win situation for everyone in the Philippines, a disaster-laded country. With 70 companies (and counting) under BPI’s sustainability projects, there’s a reduction of more than 700,000 tonnes of C02 each year. Isn’t that a huge deal? Another thing is that since these businesses get to save up on their energy consumption, the increased rate of their goods would still be lower (despite the inflation), so it’s not bad for us consumers too. Now that’s Good Capitalism!

Kudos to BPI, especially the people behind this team!