MANILA, Philippines – Accelerating the development of renewable energy (RE) in Mindanao is a “logical way forward” of achieving an ideal energy mix, which should augur well for the country’s clean energy agenda, a ranking official of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) said.
Mindanao’s current energy mix of 60-40 in favor of RE will see significant reversal to 70-30 dominated by fossil in 2018, MinDA Investment Promotion and Public Affairs director Romeo Montenegro said in a statement.
The reversal in Mindanao’s energy mix will come when 1,800 megawatts (MW) of additional capacity from coal-fired power plants start operating by 2018, based on latest data from the Department of Energy (DOE).
The first among these coal-fired power projects is the 300-MW coal plant of Aboitiz Group’s Therma South Inc. which started delivering power to the grid since late 2015.
To offset the rise of fossil and keep a balanced energy mix in Mindanao, Montenegro said MinDA, through its Mindanao Power Monitoring Committee, set-up a one-stop facilitation and monitoring center to help accelerate deployment of RE projects in the island.
“We want to purposively address a ‘business as usual’ scenario where majority of Mindanao’s energy sources by 2030 will come from mostly fossil technology, and now is the time to trigger rapid RE deployment,” he said.
The monitoring system, developed with support from USAID’s Climate Change and Clean Energy (CEnergy) project, currently tracks the progress of 284 RE projects in Mindanao.
These projects, which have a total potential generation capacity of 3,773 MW, are mostly in the pre-development stage.
To promote RE development across the country, the DOE adopted the system called Energy Virtual One Shared System (EVOSS) in the Visayas and Luzon.