Published May 27, 2019, 10:00 PM By Myrna M.
Velasco
French multinational electric
utility firm Engie will scale up its solar installations in the Philippines,
with a grander aim of becoming one of the major players of this flourishing
sector in the country.
“We are basically looking to expand
our RE (renewable energy) portfolio asset with our partners as investors,” Bert
Deprest, head of Renewable Energy Solutions of Engie Southeast Asia, has
indicated.
The French company is in a tie-up
with the FDC Utilities, Inc. of the Filinvest Group of the Gotianuns on the
massive scale solar installations in the country. FDCUI holds 60 percent equity
in their joint venture (JV) firm; while Engie has 40 percent stake – the level
of allowable shareholdings that foreign firms could have in RE investments in
the Philippines.
The Engie-Filinvest joint venture
company currently has 6.0-megawatt capacity in their solar portfolio – and the
kick-off point had been mostly on rooftop solar installations.
The next target, according to
Deprest, will be on utility-scale solar deployments in targeted sites across
Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao grids – although he has not disclosed yet the
extent of what they have been mapping up on blueprint.
“We’re actively looking for utility
scale, we also have a wide pipeline on that,” Deprest said, qualifying that “I
cannot give a figure yet to that but we all have different projects that we’re
currently investigating for development,” he said.
On continued solar rooftop
installations, Deprest noted that the JV firm is “in the process of
pre-commercial developments,” and the prospective projects are for “commercial
and industrial customers in the three regions.” He expounded that “Engie is
actually active in Luzon through our district cooling operations; then we
basically have facility management operation in the Cebu area; and then our
partner Filinvest is in Mindanao.”
The solar investment space is seen
to be in a tougher arena of competition moving forward with the Renewable
Portfolio Standards (RPS) kicking in to implementation phase next year.
The enticement for RE investors to
come to the Philippines could also be complemented by other policies that are
due for enforcement, such as the net metering system and the Green Energy
Option Program (GEOP) that will then bestow the “power of choice” for Filipino
consumers to patronize green energy sources in securing their electricity
service.
Engie is one of the world’s biggest
players in the energy sector – and its experience and track record in the RE
space would be highly beneficial to its partner on targeted investments rollout
in the Philippines.
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