Philippine wonders...

I just had a break from work and took the opportunity to do some exploring around the Philippines... The first photo is of beautiful Mt. Mayon from the plane. The area is still devastated from typhoon Reming last November. A recent typhoon caused massive mud slides on the mountain slopes, flooding some local communities and killing up to 800 people. The massive clean up from the flooding and wind damage is still on-going.

Mt Mayon in Albay province.

The rice terraces stretching all over the cordillera mountains in Northern Luzon are known as the 8th wonder of the world. The terrces around Batad stretch 100s of metres up the mountain side and create a spectacular ampitheater.

The rice terraces near Banaue, Ifugao.

CBRES Conference

SIBAT just held the 2nd national conference on Community Based Renewable Energy systems.

It was an opportunity to promote the CBRES model to other NGOs, POs, Department of Energy officials, Funding Agencies and the academe. Case studies were presented from our People's Organisations and other NGOs from partner communities.

The conference also served as a forum to address some of the gaps and challenges in the CBRES model. This included a forum on technical gaps, funding challenges, development of CBRES, sustainability of CBRES and policy promotion.

Me and Carlo in front of the new 1kW machine.

The wind turbine was used to demonstrate appropriate technology. It generated a lot of interests from participants, 2 other NGOs expressed an interest in developing the technology with the help from SIBAT. R&D partnerships were also proposed with 2 prominent universities.