“Towards Sustainable Housing and Renewable Energy Development”

“Towards Sustainable Housing and Renewable Energy Development”

By Ramon Ike Villareal Señeres, CESO, CSEE

The usual and customary interpretation of “sustainable housing” is usually understood in terms of the ability of the buyer to pay for his or her mortgage payments, and nothing else. I now would like to broaden the interpretation to mean being able to meet the other expenses that are related to the upkeep of the house and the maintenance of the day to day lifestyle of the occupants of the house, including their means to earn additional incomes as they engage in productive activities within the premises of their house.

Figuratively and practically speaking, almost every activity and facility inside the house is powered by “energy”, and understandably, energy costs account for most of the expenses that are related to the upkeep of the house, and the sustainability of the lifestyles of its occupants. With the term energy, I would mean not just the electricity, but also the cooking fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and in the case of some homes; it would also mean the kerosene gas that fuels their lamps and stoves. Generally speaking, most of the homes in our country are connected to the grid, except in some communities perhaps that may have already succeeded in generating their own power under the Independent Power Producer (IPP) law.

Depending on the local costs of electric energy, it would still be economical for most people to use LPG stoves instead of electric stoves. Depending on the local prices of kerosene gas, it is highly possible that the cost of maintaining kerosene stoves could even be higher than the costs of either electric stoves or LPG stoves. Ironically, it is also possible that in some places, the prices of firewood are so high such that the costs of maintaining the so-called “dirty kitchens” could actually be higher than having electric stoves, LPG stoves or kerosene stoves.

Here in the Philippines, in the usual and customary interpretation of the scope of “housing”, energy cooking fuels are usually understood to be “external” to the house itself. In many other countries however, gas lines are “built-in” inside the house, usually as part of a municipal gas system that also supplies gasses to fuel the street lamps. It would be fair to assume that in these countries, the costs of gasses fed through gas lines would be lower than the costs of using electricity for cooking, or for lighting the street lights. Here in Metro Manila, many still remember the fact that many years back, many homes were using gasses fed through gas lines by the Manila Gas Company.

Sad to say, it has practically become a “way of life” for everyone here in the Philippines to use LPG in canisters, not knowing perhaps that LPG and all other gasses could actually be delivered more efficiently and more economically through gas lines that are built-in into the homes and commercial establishments. Actually, the latter is now being done in many restaurants and fast food outlets, wherein the gasses are fed into the LPG stoves by gas lines that are supplied by large storage tanks outside their premises. If this could be done in these establishments, it could also be done in subdivisions, condominiums and other housing types.

Here in the Philippines and all over the world, so much attention has been given to the advocacy of building “green” homes and “green” communities, but it appears that the “greening” goals so far does not include sustainable energy on one hand, and renewable energy on the other hand. These are two mutually exclusive goals by the way, but it would be correct to say that renewable energy is definitely sustainable. In this sense, it is implied that sustainability is directly related to affordability, and it would seem that renewable energy sources are definitely more affordable than fossil based energy sources.

Needless to say, energy efficient homes are considered “green” homes, but in these modern times and up ahead in the future, energy is not the only utility that a productive home needs. Even now and more so up ahead, productive homes would need connectivity to internet and broadcast services providers, more so now that these two sets of providers are fast converging to just become one seamless industry. With new emerging trends that internet and broadcast services could now pass through power lines, the provision of energy and connectivity could eventually converge into one industry as well.

In the world of modern technologies, connectivity is usually symbolized by the “blue” light that usually means that signals are available and are accessible. Perhaps not by coincidence, “blue” is also the color of the renewable energies that are derived from non-fossil sources such as solar cells. This is the reason why I am promoting the convergence of the “green” advocacies and the “blue” advocacies, into a new fusion that I have temporarily termed as the “green and blue” convergence. Hopefully, this idea of a fusion will gain wider acceptance, so that now and in the future, all “green” homes will also become “blue” homes, and vice versa.

Looking back to my past years at the Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS), I remember that the government at that time implemented the “Shelter cum Livelihood” strategy, born of the understanding that the housing beneficiaries actually needed livelihood projects that would enable them to generate the income that they need in order to pay for their housing loan instalments. It was relatively easy for the government at that time to build the houses, but the government soon realized that providing livelihood was a much greater challenge. Later on, when the livelihood projects were already established, the government realized that the marketing of products from the livelihood projects was the greatest challenge of all.

I was recruited by the Bliss Marketing Corporation (BMC), a subsidiary of MHS, to become the Group Product Manager, leading a team of Product Managers who were all recruited from the private sector. Our mission was to market the products coming from the livelihood projects, with the expectation that not unless we could market these products, the housing beneficiaries will fail to pay for their housing loans, and the overall housing program of the government could also fail. It was at the MHS and the BMC where I learned all the lessons about what to do and what not to do when it comes to social housing and livelihood marketing, the latter in support of the former.

In the process of implementing the “Shelter cum Livelihood” strategy, the government at that time realized that livelihood training was an equally important component in the joint strategy, and this led to the creation of the University of Life (UL), yet another subsidiary of the MHS. Later on, I was assigned as a Senior Fellow to the UL, and my work shifted from livelihood marketing to livelihood training, the latter still in support of social housing. All told, these three components should really work together seamlessly.

Also at that time, the government implemented the “Basic Needs Strategy”, an approach that promoted the integration of the delivery of eleven basic needs at the local community level. Electricity was among these basic needs that were listed, along with communications. The other basic needs listed were food, clothing, shelter, water, transportation, health, education, environment and recreation. It therefore appears that one way or the other, the government already had an earlier awareness of the “blue” advocacy, as well as the “green” advocacy, even if “green” was not really the “in” thing at that time.

During the Marcos Era, there was apparently a general impression that the human settlements approach was “invented” by the former First Lady Imelda Marcos, and this impression seems to have lingered even up to now. The truth is, Mrs. Marcos (now Congresswoman Marcos) simply adopted an economic development concept that was already popularly used all over the world at that time, and was in fact already accepted and popularized by the United Nations. As faith would have it, the MHS was abolished, along with everything that had any connection with the human settlements approach, except the MHS housing projects that are still standing up to now.

Setting aside economic development from national politics, I see the need for the revival of the basic needs approach in relation to sustainable housing and renewable energy development (SHARED) even if the technical term “human settlements” will no longer be used. Fortunately, the spirit and mission of the MHS still lives on in the present day Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), the lead agency now for everything that has to do with the concept of “human settlements” as we knew it then.

SHARED is the new acronym that I am proposing to signify the revival of the basic needs approach, this time modified to incorporate the “green and blue” convergence. Just like the old basic needs approach, it will have sustainable housing as the centrepiece component, but along with it, renewable energy will also be given equal importance. Aside from energy, water and transportation will be the other two critical public utilities that will be prioritized.

It is a generally known fact that many housing projects fail or are abandoned because there is no clean water and there is no affordable transportation available. This is a problem that should already be corrected in new and future housing development projects, and I believe that the solution to this problem lies in the cooperative approach, and by that I mean the ownership of the community water system and the community transport system by the cooperatives that will be formed among the new homeowners, possibly organized as a parallel to the legally mandated Homeowner Associations (HOAs).

Depending on where you live in the Philippines, the quality of water varies. In some places, water on tap is safe to drink, but in other places, it is not, forcing people to buy bottled filtered water instead. This is an extra drain on the budgets of our people who are already burdened with heavy expenses. The technology for water filtration is already commonplace. It is just plain and simple reverse osmosis, a technology derived from the business of filtering water for dialysis purposes. The technology is so simple, such that water filtering stations are now in every street corner. It would really spare residents a lot of money if filtered water could be supplied by the cooperatives on tap already, meaning to say that it is already pumped into the residential units as part of a centralized plumbing system.

Just like buying LPG in canisters, it has become the practice to buy filtered water in bottles, and everyone now takes it for granted that it is something that we have to live with, something that we could no longer change. That is really very far from the truth, because anything in liquid or gaseous form could be pumped directly into residential units by way of centralized plumbing systems. Just to stress my point, I will also say that if we could pump gas and water in, we could also pump liquid soap and cooking oil in, an idea that could also add more savings to the household budgets of our people. Just the same, the business of supplying liquid soap and cooking oil on tap could be a service provided by the same cooperatives that would also supply the gasses and the water.

More than just in a symbolic sense, the production of biogas on site by the cooperatives and supplying the gas into the homes could be a service that will functionally implement the “green and blue” convergence. On one hand, it will be “green” because it will produce energy from waste. On the other hand, it will be “blue” because it will supply a renewable form of energy that will not only solve the problem of waste disposal, it will also solve the problem of rising energy costs. This is a combined opportunity of earning and saving that we should not miss.

Perhaps it is providential that electric powered vehicles are now in the market, not just tricycles but four wheeled cars as well. What this means is that if the coops could produce their own renewable energy efficiently, they could also own and operate an electric powered transportation system economically, thus adding to their ways of making money and saving money. It would be more advantageous for local residents to have their own transportation system that is not purely commercially driven, because commercial systems would tend to “disappear” when the passenger traffic goes down.

Even if food is essentially a commercial commodity, there are still a lot of opportunities for coops to produce their own food locally, especially if this is done in the context of livelihood generation. This is an idea that housing developers should consider in their designs, because the inclusion of livelihood production areas could impact significantly on the land use planning and the layout of the home sites. This concern is not only applicable to rural housing, because even the urban housing projects could also have their own livelihood components.

Health, education and recreation are the other basic needs that coops could provide commercially, but intentionally with a social purpose. The social purpose is to provide these services at lower and more affordable prices, something that only coops could do, because of their tax-free status, and because of their unique ability to reward their members with the unique combination of discounts, rebates and dividends.

Just to set the record straight, I am advocating the adoption of SHARED not as a project or a program, but as a standard that will be adopted by the government in general, and by the housing developers in particular. My apologies to those who might see political color in the idea of reviving a development approach that is associated with past regimes, but I assure everyone that my intentions are purely developmental and not political. My wish is that everyone will not see political color in what I write, but will see instead the color of money that could be saved or earned as we give more business to more people, using the cooperative approach.

The author is a broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, political economist and computer technologist. He was formerly Director General of the National Computer Center and Chairman of the National Crime Information System