CAMARINES Sur province is bound to become the country’s center for wind energy generation with the government-approved establishment of at least 16 facilities harnessing this renewable energy source, notably a Danish-funded P163-billion project that promises to become the country’s first and biggest offshore wind (OSW) farm with a capacity of one gigawatt (GW).
“This pioneering wind farm to be built by Danish infrastructure investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) on San Miguel Bay, along with 15 more offshore wind projects, will help the Marcos administration accelerate its planned transition from fossil fuel to renewables for the radical reduction of the Philippines’s carbon footprint,” Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said.
This CIP offshore facility on San Miguel Bay was designed to tap wind power as a variable renewable energy (VRE) source, Villafuerte said.
“Once the CIP-funded clean energy project costing a whopping P162.9 billion is built on San Miguel Bay in CamSur, hopefully by 2028, it will become the first and single biggest OSW farm in the Philippines,” Villafuerte added.
Offshore wind farms use turbines that are built on the water to generate power from winds blowing across the sea. These are considered more efficient in producing energy for electricity because of the higher speed of winds in the ocean, he said.
Onshore wind farms, on the other hand, make use of turbines built on land to generate wind energy, the lawmaker added
These OSW projects have a total potential capacity of 7,668 megawatts (MW), he said.
Aside from helping the DOE meet the government’s long-term target of generating 35 percent of the domestic electricity requirements from renewables by 2030, and an even higher 50 percent by 2040, Villafuerte noted that these CamSur wind farms will further stimulate economic activity and tourism in the province, in addition to creating several thousand jobs.
“These green or clean energy projects will likewise boost CamSur’s tourism business as these would-be wind farms are expected to attract tourists to the green project sites,” Villafuerte said.
Editor’s Note: This is an updated article. Originally posted with the headline First, biggest offshore wind farm to rise in Camarines Sur