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Industry asking for feed-in-tariff for small geothermal plants in Philippines

Industry asking for feed-in-tariff for small geothermal plants in Philippines Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City, Metro Manila, Philippines (source: flickr/ Roberto Verzo, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 5 Jul 2016

The renewable energy industry in the Philippines prepared a wish list for new government taking over in the country, with a special feed-in-tariff for small geothermal projects on the list of requests.

With a new government being formed in the Philippines, following the inauguration of a new president, the energy industry is preparing a wish list for the new Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi, who will take office next week.

Oscar L. de Venecia, Jr., president and chief executive officer of Basic Energy Corp., said a guaranteed feed-in-tariff (FiT) for developers of small geothermal power plants would be welcome, considering the long gestation period for these projects.

“A FiT system for geothermal will always be advantageous… It makes it easier for us to invite other potential partners to come in if there’s a FiT. It becomes easy for us to calculate the economics of a project,” he said in a recent interview.

He said renewable energy technology has caught up with making it a baseload plant, or power sources that can consistently generate the needed electricity to respond to minimum demand.

“The closest that can come to that is biomass. [For] solar you need batteries to make it a baseload type,” he said, referring to solar power’s intermittency that can be addressed only through battery storage.

“If you’re looking at environmental issues… geothermal will probably be the closest that can come to fitting within that,” he said.

 

Source: Business World Online