Welcome News from the Philippines Green Energy Sector

Manuel “Tonito” Z. Gonzalez, head of the Projects & Energy Practice Group of MVGS, recently contributed to an article by Inspiratia dubbed as “Philippines 2GW Auction to Revive Renewables Sector”, relating to the Philippine Government’s initiative to scale the procurement of renewables through a 2GW auction under a new green energy tariff program (GETP) to be administered by the Department of Energy (DOE). Inspiratia is a a London and Washington DC based team of industry experts and analysts that support clients with insightful studies and analysis on business and market trends.

The target under GETP is to generate 15GW of renewables capacity in the next 10 years with investment value of about US$20 billion, with the objective of ensuring flexibility, transparency, competition in the renewable energy sector.

It will be recalled that the Philippine Government implemented a feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme based on the Energy Regulatory Commission’s (“ERC”) Feed-in-Tariff Rules passed on July of 2010 and later amended through ERC Resolution No.15, series of 2012, but this did not necessarily result in lower costs to end-consumers. The GETP will be open to all developers including to those who missed FiT deadlines under the previous FiT program.

Tonito told Inspiratia that the FiT faced an oversubscription of solar applications, in particular, in 2016 the DoE reported that solar FiT applications exceeded its 500MW target by 390MW which complicated the process because the FiT scheme operated on a first-come, first serve basis. Thus, after the targeted megawatts were met, the DoE could no longer extend the benefit of the FiT to projects that can potentially reach earlier commissioning. As noted by Tonito, the number of applicants for the GETP is expected to be substantial due to the challenges faced in securing tariffs under the previous FiT programme.

The GETP launch, however, will be delayed in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To read the full article, please refer to the attachment below or you may read it at Inspiratia’s website at Philippines 2GW Auction to revive renewables sector.