By:
Ronnel W. Domingo - 01:05 AM June 19, 2017
A Danish manufacturer
of wind turbines has lamented the continued lack of standards for renewable
energy in the Philippines as well as the non-renewal of incentives for
operators of renewable projects.
“We are concerned about
the near-term outlook for wind in the country,” said Clive Turton, president
for the Asia-Pacific region at Vestas Wind Systems AS.
According to Vestas,
whose corporate hub is in Copenhagen, it has supplied hardware for projects
that so far represented 183 megawatts of wind power in the Philippines,
including the 150-MW Burgos wind power plant in Ilocos Norte.
The company has a
429-strong workforce here through the operations of Vestas Services Philippines
as well as Vestas Shared Service.
Globally, Vestas has
installed turbines that accounted for at least 83 gigawatts of installed
capacity in 75 countries —“more (installed) wind power than anyone else.”
“Since the FiT2 came to
an end, and until other policies come into effect, there is no operational wind
regulatory framework,” Turton said in a statement.
He was referring to the
second phase of the Department of Energy’s feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme, which
was intended to support the development of new renewable energy projects by
offering long-term purchase agreements for the sale of electricity generated
with renewable energy.
Turton also said that
industry stakeholders were concerned about the current renewable energy policy
gap. He said that, aside from the discontinued FiT scheme, there was still no
defined new procurement mechanism and the Renewable Portfolio Standards were
yet to be implemented.
He said this lack was
delaying the installation of new renewable energy to the benefit of
conventional fossil fuel generation, particularly coal.
“As a result, wind
development has come to a near halt while conventional fossil fuel generation
continues to grow significantly,” Turton said.
“A wind energy pipeline
of several hundreds of megawatts stands to be unlocked with clear policy in
place,” he added. “Vestas is committed to help write the next chapter of wind
energy deployment in the Philippines and work with all government and private
sector partners to that effect.”
The Department of
Energy professes a “technology agnostic” approach to building up the country’s
energy mix. This means that the government does not favor or promote any
platform.
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