On March 12, Health Care Without Harm (HCWH)-Asia and its Healthy Energy Initiative Philippines campaign joined coal-affected communities and other civil society organizations at a rally in front of the San Miguel Corporation (SMC) headquarters to demand that the company shut down its coal plants in Limay, Bataan, and shift to renewable energy.
“DENR-EMB Region III should no longer gamble with environmental and people’s health by allowing SMC to continue its deleterious operations in Bataan. And SMC, on the other hand, shouldn’t continue to tarnish the goodwill its corporate hands built over the years by insisting on an energy source like coal, that’s been proven and verified to be harmful. It is time to unlearn our dependency on fossil fuels, it is time to break free from coal,” said Paeng Lopez, Healthy Energy Initiative Campaigner for HCWH-Asia.
Recent studies, such as a Greenpeace report released in 2016 with the support of HCWH-Asia, have revealed the dangerous impacts of coal-fired power plants on human health.
