‘AboitizPower spending plan aimed at hiking RE portfolio’
By Lenie Lectura – November 5, 2020
from Business Mirror
Aboitiz Power Corp. is setting aside P24 billion for capital expenditures (capex) next year to support new and existing power projects meant to boost its renewables portfolio and eventually hit a 50:50 balance mix with fossil fuel.
The 2021 capex is lower than this year’s P33 billion.
“We are looking at P24 billion for next year, mostly to fund existing projects like GNPD (GNPower Dinginin) and new projects like our energy storage systems for TMI (Therma Marine Inc.) and SNAP (SN Aboitiz Power). We are also going to allocate capex for the full engineering study of the floating solar of SNAP in Magat,” said company president Emmanuel Rubio.
Unit 1 of GNPower Dinginin will synchronize by the end of 2020 and will commence commercial operations by the second quarter of 2021. Unit 2 will synchronize and earn commissioning revenues by the second quarter of 2021 and will commence commercial operations by the third quarter of 2021.
He added that GNDP’s capacity would be tapped to bid for the supply requirements of the Manila Electric Company.
“We are interested to participate in the Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) bid through GNDP. Both units are qualified based on the terms of reference,” Rubio said.
Meanwhile, the 39-MW Naga Power Plant Complex in Cebu started commercial operations last August after obtaining a Provisional Authority to Operate from the Energy Regulatory Commission.
The power firm has already surpassed its 4,000MW target attributable capacity for the year. It is now focus on expanding its ‘Cleanergy’ renewables brand in the next 10 years by growing its renewable energy (RE) portfolio from 940MW to close to 1800MW, Rubio said.
Rubio said this could be achieved mainly with the government’s Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and Green Energy Option Program (GEOP).
RPS is a market-based policy that requires electricity suppliers to source an agreed portion of their energy supply from eligible RE resources.
The GEOP is a mechanism that shall provide end-users the option to choose RE Resources as their source of energy.
“With regard to our 50:50 mix, we expect that. With RPS and GEOP, we are now provided a venue where we can sell capacity that we will be investing in terms of RE,” he said.
Aboitiz Power is also keen on liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is fast becoming a popular trend in power investments. “We have organized a team for gas for baseload capacity and this is something that we are seeing in the next 10 years. LNG is part of our strategy moving forward.”
When asked to comment on the latest DOE (Department of Energy) pronouncement that it would ban greenfield coal power projects, Rubio said the company fully supports this but would rather wait for the final guidelines.
Although he did mention the difficulty in financing coal plants “that’s why we mentioned before that we are not going to do greenfield coal plants moving forward.”
The pandemic has significantly impacted the company’s financial performance, but was able to sustain the delivery of the much-needed energy products and services.
“What is gone is gone. Lower demand, I don’t think you can recover from that. What we are preparing is the new capacities coming in,” said Rubio.
