NREB to hold 2,000-MW RE capacity auction in 2019

By Lenie Lectura – August 21, 2019
from Business Mirror

A PROPOSAL to auction 2,000 megawatts (MW) of renewable-energy (RE) capacity under the green-energy tariff program is being eyed for implementation within this year.

“Hopefully, we will get the approval of the board so that we could already formalize our recommendation to the secretary. There will be a draft circular for public consultation to institutionalize the program. The target is to roll this out within the year. So, hopefully, we meet the target,” said Atty. Monalisa Dimalanta, who chairs the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB).

NREB is the advisory body tasked by law to recommend policies, rules and standards to govern the implementation of the RE law, which granted fiscal and nonfiscal incentives to RE projects.

She said the implementation of the program must coincide with that of the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), a policy mandating distribution utilities to source a minimum portion of energy from renewable sources, thus guaranteeing a market for RE generators.

“We need to do that soon. Based on the instructions of the DOE secretary, the main objective is promote more investments in the RE sector considering that it won’t have feed-in-tariffs and another round of FIT anymore. So, it’s really to attract more investments and the idea is to create a market for them to facilitate their access to market for the renewable energy,” Dimalanta explained.

“The secretary promised the 2,000MW of RE. He says that ‘it’s up to you whether it comes from solar, or hydro, or geothermal, or whatever, you decide.’ The way we are looking at it in NREB, we won’t specify the resource but we will look at whether this is baseload capacity, mid-merit,” added the NREB chief.