Central Luzon State University didn’t just study solar energy. It became its own case study. CLSU’s commitment to becoming a green university materialized in 2022 with the energization of 997-kilowatt solar panels across the rooftops of eight university buildings, resulting in energy savings of more than 7 million pesos.
That early bet is now scaling into something more ambitious: agrivoltaics, the practice of growing crops underneath solar panels on the same plot of land. The technology is currently being tested across five locations, including the university itself, two barangays in Science City of Muñoz, Sta. Barbara in Llanera, and Sinipit Bubon in San Jose City, each with different water sources ranging from dug wells to shallow tubewells. The research aims to determine optimum panel spacing, identify which crops thrive in partial shade, and develop farm equipment that runs on the energy the panels generate.
This year, CLSU formalized the next phase. In June 2026, CLSU’s Center for Climate Change and Environmental Management partnered with Terra Solar Philippines to assess agrivoltaic suitability and crop productivity enhancement in solar farms in Gapan City, Nueva Ecija.
The same land producing rice and vegetables could soon be generating power. In a province where farmland and fuel imports have always competed for priority, that convergence matters.
What crops do you think are best suited for partial-shade agrivoltaic systems in tropical climates?
📷 Central Luzon State University
Engr. Alexis Belonio, a Central Luzon State University alumnus, began experimenting with rice husks in 2003 amid a national fuel crisis. The insight was deceptively simple: a small electric or battery-powered fan circulates air through the husks, enabling them to burn more efficiently, producing a clean blue flame instead of smoke.
What started as a $100 prototype eventually came down to $25 per unit, with daily operating costs of just 20 cents for the fan. Rice husks, an abundant by-product from Asia’s rice production, let families cook meals at roughly one-tenth the cost of LPG while reducing health risks from indoor smoke pollution.
The invention is now produced in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Cambodia, and can save a family of rice farmers an estimated $150 per year in fuel expenses.
In 2008, Belonio became the first Filipino to receive the Rolex Award for Enterprise, and used the prize money to establish the Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology at CLSU rather than commercializing it for personal gain.
One person’s agricultural waste became another family’s energy independence.
What other agricultural byproducts do you think are sitting on similarly overlooked potential?
Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the mangrove forests of Eastern Samar in 2013. A decade later, communities in Quinapondan are rebuilding them, one seedling at a time.
Since 2015, local associations backed by Oxfam and PRRM have planted more than 20,000 mangrove seedlings, with bamboo walkways built to help communities navigate and monitor the recovering forest. The Bantay Kalikasan program keeps it standing.
Mangroves don’t just store carbon. They are the reason communities survive the next storm.
What would it take to scale community-based mangrove protection programs across Eastern Visayas?
📷Dondon Agaton, PRRM
Mangroves and seagrasses can sequester up to five times more carbon per acre than tropical rainforests, and the Philippines has 700 billion metric tons of carbon sequestered in its coastal habitats.
It has also lost more than half of them.
Since 1918, the Philippines has lost over 64% of its mangroves, declining to 284,798 hectares today, largely due to large-scale conversion to aquaculture ponds. The ecological cost is well documented: reduced fish stocks, weakened storm barriers, and billions of tons of blue carbon at risk of being released back into the atmosphere.
What’s changing is the approach to restoration. Earlier planting programs focused on putting propagules in the ground with little regard for hydrology or tidal flow, producing monoculture stands that rarely thrived. Community-based ecological mangrove restoration now focuses on restoring the conditions that allow mangroves to regenerate naturally, with minimal planting and maximum ecological function.
What do you think is the most undervalued ecosystem service that mangrove restoration delivers?
📍Eastern Samar, Philippines
📷 Dondon Agaton, Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement
Most climate adaptation conversations focus on what happens on the ground. But some of the most critical data comes from above it.
Since its 2018 launch, Diwata-2 has continuously carried out Earth observation missions for environmental monitoring and post-disaster assessment, capturing over 157,804 satellite images and covering 96.47% of the Philippine land area. It has tracked typhoons, monitored ecosystems, and shared disaster imagery with neighboring countries through the Sentinel Asia Network.
Built by Filipino researchers. Designed to last five years. Still active today, and still delivering.
How do you think Earth observation data could be better integrated into climate adaptation planning in Southeast Asia?
Read more:
www.dost.gov.ph/knowledge-re...
📷 UP Alumni Website
Innovation in livestock feeding starts in the field. Farmers trained on corn silage-making secure feed for their livestock and as a livelihood in rural farms in the Philippines.
This practical feed innovation helps improve animal health, support better grazing management, and increase milk production for carabao, cattle, and goats.
More farmer-ready technologies mean stronger dairy enterprises and better opportunities for rural communities.
How can we sustain support for science-based solutions closer to our farmers?
📷 Philippine Carabao Center at West Visayas State University
Farmers in North Luzon are switching to solar-powered irrigation, harnessing solar power to lower production costs of planting crops, predominantly, rice.
That’s the most honest proof of concept a clean energy technology can get: adoption driven by economics, not advocacy.
When the cost of doing nothing exceeds the cost of switching, the transition happens on its own.
What other clean energy technologies in agriculture do you think are at that tipping point?
📷 Philippine Information Agency
📍Isabela, Philippines
A thermos bottle, four steps, and under an hour. That’s all it takes to detect one of the most economically damaging diseases in small ruminant farming, if you have the right tool.
Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis (CAE) causes arthritis, mastitis, progressive weight loss, and eventually death in goats and sheep. Its economic impact is significantly underestimated globally, and in the Philippines, conventional detection relies on ELISA or nested-PCR, both requiring laboratory transport with results taking three to five days. That’s three to five days of potential spread, delayed decisions, and mounting losses for smallholder goat farmers.
The QuickCArE Dry LAMP Test Kit changes that calculus. Built on Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) technology, it delivers results in four steps using a standard thermos bottle as an incubator. No cold chain. No specialized equipment. No laboratory. A color change (orange for negative, green for positive) is readable with the naked eye.
Developed by the Philippine Carabao Center with funding from the Department of Agriculture, it matches the sensitivity and specificity of laboratory-grade tests at a fraction of the cost and time.
This is what appropriate diagnostic technology looks like, built for the conditions farmers actually work in, not the conditions researchers work in.
Read more:
www.isaaa.org/resources/pu...
What other livestock diseases in Southeast Asia do you think are most in need of a pen-side diagnostic solution?
