DOE shuns ‘land-use clash’ on solar, wind projects

The Department of Energy (DOE) is enforcing policy changes that will shift renewable energy (RE) developments away from prime agricultural lands, primarily for solar and wind farm installations.

This was the directive and instruction of President Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr., said DOE Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla.

“We address the President’s concern that they (RE projects) should not compete with agriculture for the use of the land. So even right now, the sites for the onshore wind are the more marginal areas for agricultural production,” he said.

For the country to gain traction on its RE development pathway, he emphasized that the attractive options being advanced by the current administration will be mammoth installations for floating solar and offshore wind farm ventures because they will not be in competition for land use on siting.

It is worth noting that most of the solar farm projects in the country are currently assaulting the food-energy nexus, since many of the existing solar project sites are on arable lands that should have been better suited for agricultural production.

The clash on land-use priorities has not just been stirring up controversies on future RE development paragons but it is drawing battle lines among business segments that are caught in the crossfire of competing land uses, not just for energy and agriculture, but also for real estate developments.

That dilemma has been placing policymakers on a tightrope walk when it comes to balancing the imperatives of clean energy goals versus food security concerns. And if the latter is cast aside, the country could suffer from disrupted agricultural production that could then lead to food price inflation as well as possible ecological imbalances.

Lotilla lamented that the actual production of the variable renewable energy (VRE) facilities as integrated into the energy mix is still marginally low at just three percent, and these are generally coming from solar and wind farm projects in Luzon and Visayas grids.

“If we are to improve on it, definitely offshore wind and floating solar are attractive options,” the energy chief stressed.

Floating solar arrays, in particular, can be installed at the unutilized spaces of lakes, reservoirs or even the vast oceans while offshore wind could rise from coastal waters or through the depths of the open sea.

Preference is primarily given to offshore wind, according to the DOE secretary, because of the gigawatts-scale potential of the country on this particular RE resource, as initially established by a World Bank study.

Lotilla similarly cited the net generation that offshore wind facilities could yield, with him qualifying that “it can have a capacity factor – that means it can deliver up to 50-percent of its installed capacity,” and that efficiency can be further improved when complemented with energy storage systems.

He expounded that energy storage systems would be the critical technology coupling to the on-and-off generation of the solar and wind farm facilities, hence, that is another policy direction that the DOE has been sorting out with relevant industry stakeholders.

“This is an important element of that RE program because the energy storage systems are needed in order to store the energy until the peak hours when they are not available. So solar is available only during the day, we need the storage system in order to store it for night time use; so, these are among the things we have to get together,” Lotilla said.

There are also environmental concerns raised against offshore wind developments – such as its impact on marine ecosystems, but these are currently being addressed by research and development (R&D) initiatives pursued by players in the sector.