The National Power Corporation, or NPC, has reached out to the country’s largest energy players such as the Consunjis and the Ayalas to bankroll the renewable energy transition of the country’s rural areas.
In an interview with reporters last week, NPC president Fernando Martin Roxas said powering up the diesel-dependent Small Power Utilities Group or SPUG will help cut the losses incurred by NPC.
“About our hybridization plan with the private sector, we talked to 18 developers and only two said they were not interested. RE plants are financeable, we just need to organize what we offer to them, we are the counterparty in the contract,” Roxas told reporters.
“Majority of them, maybe 90 percent of them, are local but we are talking about the biggest — DMCI, Ayala, the big ones are the likes of Alternergy of Vince Perez,” he added.
The NPC, he said, is losing about P1 billion a month due to the high price of diesel. Thus, it does not have the money to undertake any SPUG modernization plan alone.
“We have to invite the private sector to come in and help us to hybridize, convert diesel plants to RE. Sufficiently, if you look at the price of solar and battery, it will fall, it is now financially viable to do it,” he said.
The NPC targets to fully supply rural areas with clean energy “by the time this admin steps down in 2028.”
The agency, along with the private sector through the New Power Providers and Qualified Third Parties, is responsible for the power generation function in around 169 off-grid areas in the country.
Based on the latest government data, coal and oil still take up the bulk of the country’s energy mix at 37 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
Under the updated Philippine Energy Development Plan, the government is targeting to increase the share of renewable energy in the country’s total energy mix to 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040. Last year, renewable energy took up only 22.8 percent of the total mix.