Manila Bulletin
by Myrna Velasco
August 4, 2015
The Department of Energy (DOE) has confirmed the expanded coverage of feed-in-tariff that will be bestowed upon renewable energy (RE) projects as underpinned by a circular that it issued.
In an interview with reporters, Energy officer-in-charge Secretary Zenaida Y. Monsada has noted that the policy shall warrant expanded coverage of the FIT system for RE project, “to ensure that the 30-percent share of the technology in the power mix can be sustained.”
She qualified though that the application will be both for the traditional RE technologies – such as geothermal and dam-based hydro projects – as well as the emerging ones such as solar, wind, run-of-river hydro and biomass.
However, she indicated that the FIT-incentivized portion may still be bigger than the currently allowed capacity, especially if the generation of geothermal and conventional hydro will dwindle in time.
The basis for the “FIT system coverage’ for RE at 30-percent share, she emphasized, shall be the installed capacity of power projects on a nationwide basis.
At present level, that could redound to more than 5,000 megawatts of capacity – which entails then that there would still be room for RE developments that shall be incentivized by FIT.
Monsada nevertheless stressed that investors will hopefully opt for ‘FIT-less project developments’ given the declining costs of both wind and solar technologies in the global market.
“The costs of technologies are going down, so we are hoping that they will put up projects event without FIT,” she said.
The energy official has similarly stressed that the guidelines for the DOE circular has yet to be crafted, hence, the specific details and numbers are yet to be drawn up.
The energy department has just recently increased to 500 megawatts the solar capacity that shall be covered by FIT; as well as for wind at 400MW from initially at just 250 megawatts. source
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