The Energy Department plans to tap funding from foreign donors or agencies to pay for the feed-in tariff of renewable energy developers, instead of passing it on to consumers.
“There is no FIT until we have found another source of funding. It should not be passed on to consumers, that’s what the Secretary [Alfonso Cusi] means,” Energy spokesman Felix William Fuentebella told reporters at the sidelines of the Senate energy committee hearing on renewable energy.
The National Transmission Corp. is presently collecting P0.124 per kilowatt-hour from all power consumers under the FIT-Allowance Fund, a line item in the power bill.
Fuentebella said the department had yet to identify the fund sources, but the facility might work similar to the previous Oil Price Stabilization Fund.
OPSF was implemented during the 1970s and 1980s to absorb the oil price differences in the market and mitigate the impact on consumers.
Fuentebella said the agency was looking at international institutions for the funding which could be in the form assistance or grants.