Phillippines to Get Push to Offshore Wind Projects from UK

The United Kingdom will be providing its support to Philippines for its shift to renewable energy. This has been disclosed by Richard Graham, a British officials who was a member of the UK Prime Minister’s trade envoy visiting the country. The envoy had visited Philippines last week. The envoy expressed support in the Philippines’ offshore wind agenda.

Speaking at the event, Graham reaffirmed the UK’s support to the Philippines’ energy transition shift and acceleration of renewables. “The UK has been providing strong government and industry support to the Philippine energy sector including the recent successful offshore wind study visit in the UK last February attended by key Philippines government officials,” he said.

Graham pointed out  at the opportunities of  trade and investment  in the country and stressed on renewing commitments to build on ongoing collaboration in the areas of offshore wind development.

Revealing the plans on renewable energy, he said, “That’s one of my great, sort of, obsessions really because we’ve gone from 7% to 43% renewable energy in the UK since 2010. I think the Philippines is somewhere around 15 to 18%, maybe as much as 20% renewable at the moment. With quite a lot of geothermal and hydro ,” Graham said.

“We see a huge opportunity here for the Philippines to benefit from offshore wind the same as we have. Also, both of us can probably do more on solar and you have more sun than we have. So, the opportunity is probably bigger for you,” he added.

He pointed out that  UK can share technical expertise on renewable energy. “I’ll hope over the next two years, we’ll see real progress in terms of getting the structure and maybe looking at more detail and particularly on the connectivity to the grid and how your grid system will be able to accommodate this,” the trade envoy said.

Recently, Philippines awarded 63 offshore wind contracts with a total potential capacity of 49.928 gigawatts, which is reported to be sufficient to supply the country’s future electricity demand.

The recent  executive order by the  country’s President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos on to accelerate the development of the country’s offshore wind resources  targets to meet the country’s target of 35 percent and 50 percent renewable energy contribution to the energy generation mix by 2030 and 2040, respectively.