Danish firm Vestas seeks ‘clarity’ in policy regime for next FDIs flow

Danish firm Vestas Wind Systems is seeking stability and clarity in the country’s policy regime to serve as “enticement” for the next round of investments flowing into the country’s renewable energy (RE) sector.

In a roundtable discussion with reporters, Vestas Asia Pacific President Clive Turton noted they are just “waiting for clarity from government” when it comes to policies that will underpin RE investments moving forward.

“What we are interested in is clarity in government on how this industry will be developed in the future… there are a number of structures to support and encourage wind project initiatives – either with FIT or even just auction process – what we’d love to see is clear direction,” he said. Asked on when the investors would enthusiastically be wanting to have that clarity in policy direction, he said in jest “we’d love to see that tomorrow.”

Turton qualified though it would be up to the government to decide what policies they will put forward or enforce – be it the proposed Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), Green Energy Option Program (GEOP) or an auction system.

Even in an era wherein feed-in-tariff (FIT) will no longer be there for the next wind projects, the Vestas executive indicated that there is still that high degree of interest for foreign investors to flow in capital in the wind sector – not just in the Philippines but in the whole of ASEAN region. He emphasized that wind technology at this point has already reached that point of ‘maturity’ in which it can already compete in the market even without FIT or subsidy scheme.

“The technology that we use already improved enormously over the years… so it is now much, much more efficient and much, much cheaper. And the cost of power from green energy to consumers is now competitive than traditional energy sources,” Turton stressed.

He said several ASEAN countries are still at their ‘starting point’ when it comes to wind energy installations, and the Philippines is in that best position of already being ahead. Nevertheless, he asserted that this country can still move headway on its leading position if the targeted new developments will be concretized soon.

“Across the ASEAN and in Asia, there’s some countries that have a lot of green resources and consistent strong wind, and the Philippines is one. The Philippines has very good resource and it is in a belt where there’s a lot of interesting weather and the Philippines has strong consistent wind, so it has that opportunity to develop these enormous resources,” he said.