Manila Polo Club bites First Gen’s offer of cheaper, cleaner power supply

By Myrna M. Velasco – July 29, 2021, 2:03 PM
from Manila Bulletin

In the cutthroat contest of the retail competition and open access (RCOA) regime of the restructured electricity sector, First Gen Corporation scored another win by cornering Manila Polo Club as its new retail power customer.

First Gen will be supplying the electricity needs of the premiere leisure sports club from the generation of the Lopez group’s Green Core Geothermal Inc. (GCGI), a geothermal power facility of 112-megawatt capacity.

Manila Polo General Manager Noel Barrameda said they’ve been enticed not just with the ‘green energy’ offer, but also with the cheaper power supply dangled to them by First Gen because that entails savings on their electric bills.

“We were pleasantly surprised to find out that using clean and renewable energy allows us to save on power bills, because First Gen offered us cheaper rates for electricity from its geothermal plant,” he noted.

First Gen is a well-entrenched player in the RE sector of the Philippines; and it is top tier retail electricity supplier (RES) when it comes to offer of clean energy resources to prospective customers.

According to Carlo Vega, vice president of First Gen, the scale of supply to be delivered to Manila Polo will be at 550 kilowatts and the contract sealed by the parties will be for a two-year stretch.

The Manila Polo Club is a thriving sports and leisure club of the country’s “rich and famous” – yet, as aptly pointed out by First Gen, it is also a flourishing “green oasis” in Metro Manila.

Manila Polo Club

On the Lopez firm’s competitive rates, Vega asserted that “our partnership with Manila Polo Club shows that using clean and renewable energy does not require our customers to spend more for their power bills,” with him stressing that “renewable energy is not only clean, it is competitively priced.”

Barrameda qualified their quest for a ‘clean energy provider’ is well aligned with the policy of Manila Polo “to adopt environment-friendly practices as part of our own efforts to mitigate climate change,” and also in support of the government-underpinned energy efficiency and conservation program.

The Manila Polo Club executive thus emphasized that “this partnership helps reassure club members that their visits to our facilities for their relaxation and business meetings leave behind only a light carbon footprint and without extra cost in power bills.”

The RCOA space of the power industry is not just where business competitive forces have been slugging each other out; this is similarly a venue for power suppliers not just to help reduce the electric bills of their buyers but to thoughtfully educate them on how they can help solve the world’s dilemma over climate change risks.