By Lenie Lectura - September 17, 2018
THE Department of Energy (DOE) has
certified two more power projects as “Project of National
Significance” under Executive Order (EO) 30.
On September 11 the agency approved
the application of Atimonan One Energy Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of
Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen), the power generation arm of Meralco.
Atimonan is putting up the country’s
first ultra-supercritical coal power plant in Atimonan, Quezon. The facility’s
capacity is 2 x 600 megawatts (MW).
The Atimonan project, MGen President
Rogelio Singson, said is shovel-ready to start construction.
The DOE also declared the 151.2-MW
Talim wind-power project of Island Wind Energy Corp. as “a project of national
significance.”
The project, still in its predevelopment
stage, was certified under EO 30 on August 30. It is located in Talim
Island, Binangonan and Cardona, Rizal. The target commercial
operations date of the first 80-MW plant is in June 2020 and the 70-MW
plant in June 2021.
The DOE earlier declared the Kalinga
geothermal-power project of Aragorn Power and Energy Corp. , the power unit of
Sy-led APC Group Inc., as an energy project of national significance.
The DOE approved Aragorn’s
application on August 14.
The project is in its predevelopment
stage, involving the development of steam fields that can generate anywhere
between 100 MW and 200 MW.
In May the DOE certified the
Visayas-Mindanao Interconnection Project (VMIP) as the first power
project under EO 30.
The VMIP involves the
interconnection of the Visayas and Mindanao via Cebu and Zamboanga. The
project is estimated to be completed in 46 months with an estimated
cost of P52 billion.
The Visayas-Mindanao interconnection
project is meant to interconnect the major grids into a single national grid
expected to help improve the overall power-supply security in the country as
sharing of reserves will already become possible.
EO 30 states that concerned
government agencies shall act upon applications for permits involving Energy
Projects of National Significance (EPNS) not exceeding a 30-day period. If no
decision is made within the specified processing time frame, the application is
deemed approved by the concerned agency.
This effectively reduced the time to
process the permits needed for power projects to take off.
In order for an energy project to be
considered among the EPNS, power generation and transmission projects must have
a capital investment of at least P3.5 billion, significant contribution to the
country’s economic development, significant consequential economic impact,
significant potential contribution to the country’s balance of payments,
significant impact on the environment, complex technical processes and
engineering designs, and significant infrastructure requirements.
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