PH LACK OF RENEWABLE ENERGY STANDARDS HIT

A Danish manufacturer of wind turbines has lamented the continued lack of standards for renewable energy in the Philippines as well as the non-renewal of incentives for operators of renewable projects.

“We are concerned about the near-term outlook for wind in the country,” said Clive Turton, president for the Asia-Pacific region at Vestas Wind Systems AS.

According to Vestas, whose corporate hub is in Copenhagen, it has supplied hardware for projects that so far represented 183 megawatts of wind power in the Philippines, including the 150MW Burgos wind power plant in Ilocos Norte.

The company has a 429strong workforce here through the operations of Vestas Services Philippines as well as Vestas Shared Service.

Globally, Vestas has installed turbines that accounted for at least 83 gigawatts of installed capacity in 75 countries —“more (installed) wind power than anyone else.”

“Since the FiT2 came to an end, and until other policies come into effect, there is no operational wind regulatory framework,” Turton said in a statement.

He was referring to the second phase of the Department of Ener- gy’s feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme, which was intended to support the development of new renewable energy projects by offering long-term purchase agreements for the sale of electricity generated with renewable energy.

Turton also said that industry stakeholders were concerned about the current renewable energy policy gap. He said that, aside from the discontinued FiT scheme, there was still no defined new procurement mechanism and the Renewable Portfolio Standards were yet to be implemented.

He said this lack was delaying the installation of new renewable energy to the benefit of conventional fossil fuel generation, particularly coal.

“As a result, wind development has come to a near halt while conventional fossil fuel generation continues to grow significantly,” Turton said.

“A wind energy pipeline of several hundreds of megawatts stands to be unlocked with clear policy in place,” he added. “Vestas is committed to help write the next chapter of wind energy deployment in the Philippines and work with all government and private sector partners to that effect.”

The Department of Energy professes a “technology agnostic” approach to building up the country’s energy mix. This means that the government does not favor or promote any platform.