Sama Bilbao y Leon, Director General, World Nuclear Association: Well so it is a pleasure to have together with us the honourable Marco Cojuangco. He's the chairman of the House Committee in nuclear energy in Philippines welcome thank you for joining us in the Net Zero Nuclear Pavilion.

Mark Cojuangco, Chair of the House Committee on Nuclear Energy, Philippines: Thank you for inviting me Sama to this very prestigious new initiative Net Zero Nuclear, a joint effort between ENEC and World Nuclear Association. I'm so honoured and it's a very big privilege to be here with you.

It is lovely to have you. We really want to hear what is happening in in Philippines when it comes to nuclear energy.

Well I have been a nuclear advocate for 17 years now since 2007 when I was informed by our Department of Finance that our nuclear plant 100% complete was fully paid for, for the amount of $2.12 billion, and $699 million of that was out of pocket interest out of pocket because we never run the plan since 1986 in spite of the Philippines having a power crisis the highest electricity price in the region and that is because of unfounded fears of nuclear because of the anti-nuclear movement in the world in the 70s and 80s.

And so we had a pending power crisis in 2013 and I said we have a fully paid for nuclear plant we have an impending power crash,  why not run this this plant? So, I filed the bill unfortunately I ran out of time to see it through. I had a majority of the house as supporters at that time and then Fukushima happened in 2011 - although my wife replaced me because I I did three terms term limits - my wife replaced me and filed a similar Bill and she had even more co-authors than I right but then Fukushima happened and we declared a moratorium on our advocacy and on the bill because we wanted to know what happened to the plant if there was a real failure of containment maybe I will not be pronuclear today right maybe I would be anti-nuclear but then after a few years we - continuous reports -  and we found out that the radiation there is still lower than the background in Seattle or Denver and so we said well containment works in spite of a triple meltdown, nobody was hurt, nobody was injured, maybe this makes the case for nuclear safety rather than destroys the case and so we fought again.

My wife was a congresswoman until 2016 and then I ran for governor and she ran for re-election we both lost but in 2022 I decided to return after 12 years and I won in another District of Pangasinan - the District of my opponents okay - and now I'm pushing again in the house and we filed the bill consolidated from 13 authors on nuclear regulation and this Bill uses the language of the IAWA we had we hired a international nuclear law expert attorney and all the authors liked the bill so much that they endorsed it right away so we consolidated it into one bill and just a few weeks ago, two weeks ago, it passed the house 200 yes, seven no and two abstentions so finally we have this legal framework, which sets the method for waste disposal and sets the amount to be collected per kilowatt hour to pay for this disposal when the time comes and then end of life decommissioning trust fund regulatory fund fee and so it is set up to be independent of any Department in the Philippine government so I'm waiting now for the progress at the Senate I think we have a lot of numbers there so I see this bill passing in three -  at the most six months.

So, we are going to be watching very closely what is happening in Philippines because clearly you are started to do your part to achieve this decarbonization after this law.

We already passed our committee in the house the nuclear liability law which defines the operator as being ultimately liable so that if anything happens, they can collect insurance money up to 350 million SDRs, about $450 million, US, which is by law you have to get insurance for that. This is as is standard practice and then after that we will file the nuclear incentives act which sets the pay for nuclear workers, we want the pay to be high because we want quality people we don't want a big turnover and then it will give the tax incentives and the other benefits for nuclear investment.

Okay so you really are on your way so let me ask you this you are here right now in Dubai at COP 28 what are your big hopes and your big expectations from this gathering.

My expectations, for this is the first COP I ever attended, and my expectations are more than fulfilled because I was contacted by the UAE authorities on nuclear and invited to attend the declaration where UK, France, Sweden, USA, Finland and UAE declared that they recognize the contribution of nuclear power to reducing pollution and fighting - being a good  weapon to fight against global warming and climate change - and they are pushing that the world - the entire world nuclear capacity, installed capacity - will be increased by three times before 2050 and that really made my day, that made my trip here all worthwhile. Now I have a new message to tell the politicians and the public in the Philippines that nuclear is on the way not only here but in the entire world.  So I think we can put to rest all these unfounded fears. Now I've always approached it on a fact factual basis so I've always tried to answer - I've always tried to remove politics from my advocacy and only address the facts.

I don't know if you remember on Saturday in that in that ceremony of the declaration this is exactly what the minister of energy of Sweden mentioned that we needed to remove politics from energy policy and put back science facts and pragmatism.

You know what other thing excited me was the mention by I'm not sure if it was secretary Kerry whom (special Envoy Kerry)  who mentioned that up to $9.2 trillion will be made available to finance this because if you are a poor country like the Philippines you know financing for this is a is a major issue. But there are some countries especially like the

Philippines,  like Japan, our context is that we do not have indigenous fuel we do not have coal we do not have gas so our population is exported to work abroad here the  Emirates, Saudi Arabia, all over Europe, southeast Asia, the richer countries, because we are so poor and the money they earn and they send back to the Philippines we should not use it to import fossil fuels just to burn - we should use it as capital to build our country - and if we have nuclear we can avoid billions of dollars every year in importing all of this for because like if it's 200-300 million dollar a year for a 1 GW coal plant - for nuclear is $30 million. so there's a big big differ big difference.

You are right I think that this declaration had this specific call from governments for World Bank and other multilateral development institutions before to support nuclear projects.

Before, if you talk to World Bank, they will not touch nuclear, but maybe they will start considering it.

Well so it is always a pleasure to talk to you. We will continue keeping our eyes on what you are doing in Philippines and of course you know that the entire nuclear family is here ready to support you

And I'm also ready to support you in any way I can do. Please feel free to contact me if you want to organize visits you can visit our nuclear plant it's still open it's not yet operating, I can tour you the plant show you how well built our nuclear plant is.