By
Lenie Lectura - July 19, 2017
AC Energy Holdings
Inc., the power arm of conglomerate Ayala Corp., is actively pursuing potential
investments in renewable energy (RE) projects in Vietnam.
AC Energy President and
CEO John Eric Francia said on the sidelines of the Philippines Power and Electricity
Week forum he is scheduled to visit Vietnam this weekend.
“We’re doing a lot of
early business development works in Vietnam,” he said. “We’re very busy.”
He did not discuss
details of his impending trip, but said AC Energy is “talking to potential
partners” in Vietnam to pursue an investment in RE, particularly in wind and
solar power.
“It’s really exploring
partners. We will not invest on our own in Vietnam,” Francia said. “We will do
it if we have local partners.”
He added the
Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) regime in Vietnam is among the reasons AC Energy
wants to pursue an investment there.
“There’s FiT for solar
and wind in Vietnam. We’re also open to conventional. The government is going
to ‘equitization’, privatization process, so we’re looking at that, but nothing
is imminent yet. We’re just monitoring their ‘equitization’ process,” he said.
Based on Vietnam’s FiT
rules on solar-power projects, a two-year FiT regime is currently being
enforced.
“There’s a deadline:
June 2019. The [solar] plant should be running by then.” The prospective
project in Indonesia involves foreign and local partners. “It’s a three-way
partnership with AC Energy owning between 70 percent to 75 percent,” Francia
had said, adding that the wind project is less than 100 megawatts (MW) in
capacity.
“[Indonesia] has a big
demand. If you look at its market, it’s growing,” he said in an earlier
interview.
AC Energy is targeting
another 1,000 MW of additional capacity from the current 1,000 MW already put
in place together with partners.
Of the new target, the
company expects 60 percent to come from RE sources, which include solar and
wind.
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