Aboitiz Power Corp. and Manila Electric Co., two of the country’s largest power firms, are ramping up investments next year, company executives said over the weekend.
Aboitiz Power Corp. chief finance officer Juan Alejandro Aboitiz said they were looking at capital expenditures of about P50 billion in 2024.
“A big part of our capex [capital expenditures] is for new projects, primarily for renewables. Fundraising is always a critical component of growth, so we’re looking at all of our options to raise more debt to fund our new projects,” Aboitiz said.
Aboitiz Power aims to transform its generation portfolio to have 50 percent renewable energy, or equivalent to 4,600 megawatts by 2030.
Meanwhile, Meralco is looking at a capex budget of P50 billion to P140 billion over the next three to five years.
“In respect of the existing power plants, not too much. It’s the new plants that will need significant capex. It’s a broad range of capex. It depends on whether we get approval, or the investment will happen or not,” Meralco chairman Manuel Pangilinan said.
“It’s difficult to estimate, but it’s over a period of three to five years,” he said.
Meralco’s power generation arm Meralco PowerGen Corp. earlier announced plans to put up an initial 1,500 MW of RE capacity by 2030.
The government promotes the development of renewable energy projects in line with its target to raising the RE share in the power generation mix to 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040.
Meanwhile, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) said the Department of Energy would reschedule the planned auction of geothermal, run-of-river hydro and pumped storage hydro projects to 2024.
ERC chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta said the auction was supposed to be conducted this month, but the Department of Energy (DOE) was not yet finished with the preparations.
“So, it might be first quarter of next year,” Dimalanta said, referring to the third round of the Green Energy Auction Program (GEAP).
The DOE has yet to release the capacities that will be offered under GEAP 3.
The GEAP is the DOE’s initiative to attract current and incoming power players to invest in RE generation.
Dimalanta said the ERC met with the DOE Friday on not imposing a reserve price for GEAP 3. The GEA reserve prices serve as the ceiling price offers in the auction.
“We encountered challenges on setting the pricing parameters because that is what DOE requested of us instead of the GEAR, set the pricing parameters,” Dimalanta said.
She said the meeting focused on pricing parameters and the next steps under the program.