Philippines planned FIT program to help renewables development
Power sub station, Biliran, Philippines (source: ThinkGeoEnergy)
Alexander Richter
8 May 2013
Planned feed-in-tariff in the Philippines could help speed up renewable energy project development, but currently does not include geothermal.
The Philippines have planned a new incentive program for renewables and it looks now like it could be introduced as early as next year.
The program would introduce feed-in-tariffs that would pay higher prices for electricity generated from renewable energy sources.
With the ongoing economic development in the Philippines there is an increasing power demand and Energy Development Corp. (EDC) expects the demand to grow from 4.3% to 5.2% annually for the next five years.
As part of its ambitious National Renewable Energy Programme of 2011, the FIT in its current form would provide higher rates for run-of-river hydro, biomass, wind and solar. Geothermal is not mentioned.
Given the value of geothermal as a reliable base load power, it should be very valuable to also provide FIT for geothermal. But it currently does not seem to be part of the plans of a feed-in-tariffs.
Currently, geothermal developers need to either contract individually with private off-takers or sell it into the national grid. The prices gained are not as high as the proposed tariffs for hydro, biomass, wind or solar and need to be contracted individually. This makes it challenging but at the same time provides an incentives for buyers to choose the electricity with the necessary reliability. At the same time electricity buyers have to source a certain percentage from renewable sources.
A FIT based tariff for geothermal would though help investors and speed up development.
Source: Oxford Business Group
