DOE eyes new scheme to revive idle Renewable projects
The Philippine government is exploring a new approach to revive terminated renewable energy contracts, as it still hopes to pursue the idle projects.
Mylene Capongcol, director of the Renewable Energy Management Bureau of the Department of Energy (DOE), said the agency is now studying a new mechanism that could speed up the realization of such projects. That is, faster compared to the usual open and competitive selection process (OCSP).
“Usually, our general policy, if it’s terminated or relinquished, we do the open and competitive selection,” Capongcol told reporters in a chance interview.
She said that the projects subject to the OCSP are geothermal, hydro and wind.
There is no OCSP for solar developments yet, Capongcol said.
She added that the new mechanism should be stricter. However, Capongcol did not provide additional details.
In 2024, the DOE began purging inactive or idle renewable energy projects, starting with about 105 producers.
“At this time, we are more actively monitoring the performance of these service contractors or contract holders,” Capongcol said.
The DOE official did not specify the total capacity of terminated contracts or the number of renewable energy developers involved.
However, she said that there are around 1,400 awarded service contracts with about 130 gigawatts of potential power capacity.
Unserious developers
Raphael Lotilla, former Energy Secretary, earlier eased concerns on possibly dampening investments in the market due to DOE’s crackdown on unserious developers.
“In fact, it encourages more serious investments in the renewable energy sector,” Lotilla said.
The government has a target of scaling up the renewables’ share in the power generation mix to 35 percent by 2030 from the current 22 percent.
It has been conducting green energy auctions (GEA) to entice investors to get more involved in the growing sector.
The GEA is designed to expand the renewable energy market in the Philippines while providing developers with incentivized fixed power rates.
