Written by Madelaine B. Miraflor Reporter Published on 14 March 2013
The Philippine Association of Small Scale Hydropower Inc. (PASSHydro) is calling on the Department of Energy (DoE) to trim down the time to process the permits for hydropower projects in the country, which usually takes about four to five years, an association official said during the Philippine Hydropower Summit 2013.
In an interview with reporters, PASSHydro Treasurer Rene Ronquillo said that it usually takes four to five years before hydro developers get their permits from the DoE to do a certain project, and this compromises the 25-year incentive that they could get from the project. He also said that it takes longer to get the permit than to build a hydropower plant.
“We have consultations with DoE and we brought up the issues because all the developers have the same problem. Recently, there have been some talks about the allocation of installation targets and they were suggesting maybe we should allocate hydro because they’re not many, but the reason why they’re not many is because it’s taking a long time to process the applications,” Ronquillo added.
He specified that the ideal time frame for permitting process “would be one year, but that would be asking for too much.”
“Maybe three years, because we understand that some of the permits really cannot be done simultaneously,” he added.
The industry official said that it would be better if hydropower developers don’t have to go to DoE several times to be able to complete process for permits.
“Government permits and consents take about 18 to 20 months and four to five years permitting period, 1.5 to two years construction period. You don’t get the 25-year incentive from the RE [Renewable Energy] Service Sontract,” Ronquillo said.
“Each transaction, you need to go back to DOE for endorsement. It doesn’t stop. You keep going back,” he added.
Ronquillo explained further that part of the problems of developers during development stage is the detailed study—feasibility study and detailed engineering—which costs tens of millions of pesos.
“So that by itself takes eights months to a year [to complete], so you add that to the development stage,” he said. source
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