Wednesday, June 22, 2011

RE Act of 2008 ensures renewable-energy industry, expert says

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WEDNESDAY, 22 JUNE 2011 20:19 PAUL ANTHONY A. ISLA / REPORTER

THE implementation of the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 is the Philippines’ key to developing its renewable-energy (RE) industry and a low carbon consuming economy, S Chander, Asian Development Bank energy committee chairman and principal director of the information systems and technology office, said on the sidelines of the 6th Asia Clean Energy Forum.
“The Philippines has a very comprehensive RE Act that it should start to implement. It’s important to put this into practice soon. The thing is when you have something, you should start working on it and then round out the edges later on,” the ADB official.
Chander said the ADB is pushing for government regulation on renewable energy, particularly the Feed-in Tariff as it has yet to be approved.
He also noted that there is no current mechanism for those with RE-based self-generating facilities to export their excess capacity into the grid.
Chander cited the ADB building, for instance, which has its own 330 kilowatt (kW) solar installation under contract.
“The reason we had to restrict it to 330 kw was, we had to restrict to the minimum consumption of this building, because if there was a surplus, there is no way we could export it out of the current regime,” he said.
Chander said government regulation help to ensure that system changes to enable people to invest more profitably into RE.
He added that they are also pushing for the government to come up with a more accurate and systematic data-gathering system.

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