CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—The country’s power mix must include renewable energy for health and environment reasons, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Carlos Jericho L Petilla said.
Speaking at a forum on Renewable Energy at Xavier University on March 30, Monday, Petilla shared the intense competition in coal power generation is pulling down its price. In Luzon, “the private players are already doing the aggregation of demand resulting to cheaper electricity rates at P3.70 per kilowatt hour (kwh).”
If the same thing happens in Mindanao, “for sure the electricity rates will also become cheaper and more transparent,” he said.
But where does renewable energy come in?
Petilla said renewable energy will lose in terms of price because it is expensive and intermittent. “Without sun, there is no power, no wind means also no power and so on,” he said.
The DOE through the Renewable Energy Act imposes mix of renewable energy through Feed-In Tariff (FIT) rates.
Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 mandates the establishment of a FIT system for electricity produced from renewable sources such as solar, wind, biomass, ocean and run-of-river hydropower.
Right now, FIT rates per kwh for wind is Php8.53, biomass at Php6.63 per kwh, solar Php9.68 per kwh, run-of-river hydropower at Php5.90 per kwh.
Petilla said the mix must be renewable by 30 percent and to achieve it, something should be done.
The Philippines is still the cleanest among all ASEAN countries. Other countries are 80 percent using coal, Petilla said.
In 2013, coal made up 42 percent of the energy mix. Since then its use has grown. Today there are 23 coal plants being built.
Processing renewable energy contracts used to take two years. It has been drastically reduced to 45 days.
As of December 31, there were 12 renewable energy projects with certificate of endorsement to Energy Regulatory Commission with total capacity of 302.416 megawatts (MW).
There are 79 renewable energy projects with certificate of confirmation of commerciality with a total capacity of 1,569MW. Ten more projects with a total capacity of 197.77MW are up for nomination or conversion. (JMOR/PIA10)
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The forum on Renewable Energy was organized by the XU – Research and Social Outreach (RSO) and Engineering Resource Center (ERC), held at the Berchman Function Room, Magis Building of XU.
Among those in attendance were XU president Fr Roberto “Bobby” C Yap SJ, XU - College of Engineering faculty and staff, frontlined by Dean Dr Hercules R Cascon and ERC director Engr Dexter Lo, and representatives from energy companies in Mindanao, among others.