Recently, Philippines disclosed the country’s renewable energy (RE) road-map at 13th session of IRENA in Abu Dhabhi where it highlighted its energy transition goal to increase the renewables share in the power generation mix to 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040 from the current level of 22 percent.
In a step towards achieving this goal, in the coming month of June,the Philippines will auction rights to build up to 11,600 megawatts of new power capacity from renewable sources in the next three years, gradually reducing its dependence on coal.
Dwelling on the auction and the sources for these renewables, the Department of Energy informed that the additional capacity will come from solar, onshore wind, biomass and waste-to-energy resources.
The government has invited bidders for 3,600 MW of new capacity in the year 2024 and next in 2025 for the capacity of 3,600 MW and later in the year 2026 for the capacity of 4,400 MW in 2026, under the second round of its Green Energy Auction programme. There were no investment figures provided by the department for the auctions.
To push forward growth in renewables, there are exemptions from a rule that limits foreign ownership in any energy project to 40%, while seeking to phase out coal-fired power plants and transition to low-carbon fuels.
To this end, for last two years, the government has stopped accepting new proposals for coal-based power projects..
Further, as per the Philippines, strategies to achieve its target for the coming years include- indigenous RE resources and private sector investments, which are further encouraged with the liberalization of foreign ownership for RE investments up to 100 percent (except for hydro and conditional for geothermal projects).
The nation feels that the new and emerging RE technologies and resources such as offshore wind, floating solar and marine RE development will provide open greater opportunities for foreign investments, too.
