First Gen is ‘alpha company’ in sustainability journey
While some Philippine businesses still treat “sustainability” as a must-have fashion accessory to elevate corporate charm and build up branding, especially with lenders and on ESG compliance, First Gen Corporation of the Lopez group stands out in genuinely championing green energy solutions.
Long before “sustainability” became a buzzword among global and domestic firms, First Gen Chairman and CEO Federico R. Lopez was already at the podium trumpeting the country’s urgent need to finally pull the plug on carbonemitting technologies - primarily coal plants - for the sake of preserving the planet for humanity’s survival against climate change risks and to conserve it for future generations.
That grit and purposeful conviction then served as inspiration to the investment trajectories and socio-economic undertakings that First Gen, its subsidiaries and affiliate-companies in the Lopez group, have been advancing not just to attain sustainability – but even to surpass that by aiming for a “regenerative future.”
As things stand today, the projects being pursued by the Lopez group are centered on renewable energy installations, primarily the ones brought into commercial stream by its subsidiary Energy Development Corporation
(EDC), a company that has the distinction of being a trailblazing industry player to have an allrenewables portfolio (i.e. geothermal, wind and solar) under its sleeve.
For the remaining fossil fuel-based generation – its gas-fed power plants – First Gen is already casting on blueprint their eventual technology conversion into hydrogen, which is also in the genre of clean energy technologies.
The Lopez group has likewise been accelerating the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) as transport fleet across business units, while also pursuing a mandate that the electricity supply for its subsidiaries shall be coming from RE sources.
First Gen and EDC are also primemovers in supporting the government’s flagship endeavor – the Green Energy Option Program (GEOP) – on empowering consumers to patronize RE as the source of electricity supply that will be delivered into their homes or businesses.
Cementing First Gen’s sustainability pathway
According to Lopez, the conglomerate’s journey into “sustainability and beyond” had been anchored on 10 highly selected words: “to forge collaborative pathways for a decarbonized and regenerative future.”
That is a mission that First Gen and its parent firm, First Philippine Holdings Corp. (FPHC), had presented to their shareholders in 2021 – with the wordsmithing taking several months; while actual planning had its genesis as far back as 2013, when the country had to live through the horror of super-typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan), the worst tragedy that claimed thousands of lives and caused billions-worth of property damages. The “regenerative pathway” of the Lopez group is considerably a more