PH launches road map to speed up offshore wind projects
The Philippines has released a “comprehensive” road map for offshore wind projects. This is to ensure that permit bottlenecks will not stall the country’s push to realize more than 178,000 megawatts (MW) of potential capacity.
Working with the Southeast Asian Energy Transition Partnership, the Department of Energy (DOE) crafted a guide for both the private and public sectors. This lays down the regulatory requirements and timelines for each step in building offshore wind farms.
Energy players have to secure more than 80 permits from over 25 agencies to pursue a project.
Acknowledging that this “has long been a challenge” for investors, the DOE said the road map promotes “better coordination and predictability” between the developers and government agencies.
“It transforms a complicated process into one that is streamlined, more transparent, and easier to follow for both government and investors,” DOE officer in charge Sharon Garin said in a statement Monday.
DOE Undersecretary Rowena Guevara gave assurance that while the government is pushing for faster processing of permits, this would be “never at the expense of environmental and community safeguards.”
“The compendium ensures that good governance and clean energy go hand-in-hand,” Guevara added.
Just this month, the DOE bared it was eyeing 3,300 MW of offshore wind capacity under the fifth round of the green energy auction (GEA). The delivery is set from 2028 to 2030.
According to the agency, the GEA-5 would focus on the fixed-bottom offshore wind because of its “established global track record, cost-efficiency and scalability.”
The DOE earlier said this approach would help the Philippines “expedite the near-term deployment of offshore wind.”
But the government remains open to eventually expanding the offer to include floating offshore wind developments.
Boosting the market with offshore wind developments complements the government’s goal of increasing renewables’ share in the power generation mix from 22 percent to 35 percent by 2030.
