Pipe dream

You just can’t keep a good man, and a good institution, down.

While San Miguel Corp. (SMC)’s energy business has received all sorts of baseless trashing and mudslinging from a number of fronts, mostly from those whose agendas are dubious to say the least, the company and its chief executive remained unperturbed.

With SMC’s slogan “Your World Made Better,” the company and its president, Ramon Ang, simply continued coming up with projects that not only make good business sense, but at the same time, support the country’s growth and development and promote inclusive growth.

The Philippines in fact is set to become one of the world’s leaders in the use of battery energy storage systems (BESS) technologies, seen as critical in helping the country transition to clean energy, following the inauguration of SMC’s nationwide BESS network with a combined capacity of 1000 MWh.

President Marcos recently led the inauguration in Limay, Bataan where SMC built a combined total of 90-MWh BESS facilities. This is part of a total of 32 battery storage stations all over the country being built by SMC through its power unit San Miguel Global Power.

The project is considered among the largest integrated battery storage networks in the world, and the first and largest in the country.

According to the President, SMGP is poised to become one of the largest grid-scale battery energy storage system operators in the world, something the nation can truly be proud of. This, he emphasized, puts the Philippines ahead of so many countries in terms of adoption of this technology which is crucial to the country’s clean energy future.

The President added that the BESS technology would support the country’s goal of generating 35 percent of its total energy requirement from renewables by 2030.

Meanwhile, Ang explained that the battery energy storage is an important global innovation in the energy sector and would support the country’s power grid by storing excess power from existing plants and injecting this power back when and where needed within milliseconds to ensure stable power quality.

He added that battery energy storage can solve the problem with most renewable energy sources which is intermittence. With this, he expects that in the next couple of years, up to 5000-MW of renewable power will be integrated into the grid.

This is definitely a huge mic drop moment for SMC and Ang, who have remained unfazed and unperturbed by all the ambient noise.

As mentioned by the President himself, seven years from now, we are hoping to source 35 percent of the country’s energy requirements from renewables. This means that 65 percent will still have to come from traditional sources, including fossil fuels like coal.

Our government itself is also pushing for the construction of new liquified natural gas (LNG) capacities, as these are acknowledged globally as the better, safer, more environment-friendly alternative to coal power.

For the longest time, SMC’s detractors have painted the company as nothing more than a purveyor of harmful and polluting fossil fuels like coal and LNG, with supposedly no care for the environment. Nothing is farther from the truth.

What these detractors are not saying is that fully transitioning to all-renewable power is just a pipe dream and will remain as such for a very long time.

They also refuse to acknowledge the fact that SMC’s planned investments in new power capacities, particularly LNG, are needed by the country and are critical to mitigating the power crisis that is not just looming, but is already upon us.

What we can hope for at the moment is a healthy mix of traditional and renewable power sources.

Battery power, LNG, renewables, all these are key to weaning ourselves out of dirty fuel.

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