Intel’s Andy Grove Provides Good Advice for the Philippines
By Rico, 8:08 am Tue Jul 15 2008 - Editorial - 2 Opinions
Andy Grove may be the former chairman of Intel, an American company. He may have also written Our Electric Future for an American audience, or for the US itself. Yet his ultimate point:
Electricity is the ‘stickiest’ form of energy and it is multi-sourced. As a result, it will give us the greatest degree of energy resilience.
…is very very suitable for problems currently facing the Philippines.
Similarities Between the US and the Philippines
Like the US, the Philippines is also suffering from increasingly high fuel prices, and like the US (and perhaps to an even greater degree), the Philippines needs to import oil to match the growing local demand, which frankly puts us at the mercy of oil-producing exporters.
And like the US, the Philippines has so many sources of energy (geothermal, natural gas, etc.) that it can tap to produce electricity. The point of Andy Grove was that true “energy resilience” (i.e., less dependence on imported oil) becomes more attainable if everything runs on electricity. That’s because “Electricity… is ’sticky’: it stays in the continent where it is produced”, or in our case in the country where it’s produced.
Of course, we all know how challenging it is to to create efficient and sustainable sources of electricity in the Philippines. But the primary problem is execution, not a lack of resources. Electric tricycles and Jeepneys anyone?
Image source: earthtrends.wri.org
Josh
5:05 pm Wed Jul 16 2008
We need stuff that runs on saltwater. We’ve got a lot of that.
Technograph
4:04 pm Sat Jul 19 2008
Yes, but wouldn’t that cause a salt shortage somewhere down the road? Hehe