The Energy Department said it will review its policies, including the Renewable Portfolio Standards, to bring the share of renewable energy in the Philippine power generation mix to 35 percent of the total energy portfolio.
“2020 has seen a slight growth [for RE] although it’s really not that substantial…But the challenge in front of us is really to reach the target of 35 percent, and we are still a long way from the target,” Energy Assistant Secretary Redentor Delola said Friday during a webinar organized by the Clean Energy Investment Accelerator in coordination with the National Renewable Energy Board and the National Electrification Administration.
Data from NREB showed that the share of renewable energy in the Philippine power generation mix hit a low of 21 percent in 2019
Delola said the department was looking at ways to increase the share of RE in the generation mix.
“In fact, one of the things we are studying right now is to revisit some of the policies we’ve already promulgated. The RPS rules, does it really drive the utilization of RE? We are trying to review if the one percent increment would still be able to reach our target, or we may revisit it and probably increase it a little bit so we may be able to reach our targets,” the energy official said.
RPS sets the minimum percentage of generation to be sourced from RE sources. It is set at one percent of electricity sales allocation for distribution utilities connected to the grid.
“We are very excited for what 2020 has to offer for RE, because this is the year finally when all the RE Act mandated programs are going to be implemented,” NREB chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta said in the same forum.
Dimalanta earlier said capacity addition from RE generation was way behind the target of 15,000 megawatts by 2030.
“When RE Act was passed back in 2008, renewable energy already accounted for less than 40 percent, around 35 to 40 percent of our energy mix. So that was our starting point. We counted from 35 to 40 percent to further grow the share of renewable energy by the passage of the RE Act,” Dimalanta said.
Based on NREB figures, RE captured 25.64 percent of the generation mix in 2014, before it went down to 25.44 percent in 2015 and 24.21 percent in 2016.
The share of RE in the mix improved slightly to 24.57 percent in 2017 but again declined to 23.38 percent in 2018 before going falling to 21 percent last year.
Additional capacity from RE between 2009 and 2019 reached 2,196.34 MW, of which the bulk came from solar. This brought the total RE capacity to 7,600 MW, behind the 15,000 MW target by 2030.
“So from what we have in 2010, which was when the NREP [National Renewable Energy Program] was passed, 5,438 MW in capacity in 2010, the target was to triple that to 15,000 MW…allocated along the resources that has been identified by the act,” Dimalanta said.
“Apart from the capacity we have not realized, it’s the share in the mix that keeps on dwindling that makes us pause,” Dimalanta said.
Dimalanta said the National Renewable Energy Program should be reviewed.
“We are looking at the Philippines requiring more than 45,000 MW of capacity by 2040, what portion should be taken by RE, and this to me is the compelling reason we need to be deliberate. We need to be more decisive in terms of allocating, or targeting the share of RE,” she said.
“This makes it to me imperative to update the NREP. The target is last year. We realize that NREP is 10 years old and it has not been updated. The costs have changed for some technologies. The projections for demand have changed so it really requires a lot of updating,” Dimalanta said.
