DOE to ensure ‘marine protected areas’ are off-limits to offshore wind projects

BY Myrna M. Velasco – Aug 16, 2024 03:38 PM
from Manila Bulletin

At a glance

• In the Philippines, prospective offshore wind developers indicated that some of the service contracts (SCs) awarded within portions of the Batangas-Mindoro stretch may straddle or might intrude on some part of marine protected areas as navigation channels – especially for their logistics requirements during construction period; while some may cut across sites needed for grid connection of their facilities.
• Until this time, however, there is no specific policy laid down yet by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) if some of the awarded service contracts will be cancelled or if some developers will eventually need to abandon their projects because they would be encroaching into fragile habitats of marine resources or if they would be disturbing fish or bird sanctuaries.

According to Energy Undersecretary Rowena Cristina L. Guevara, “protected zones are always the winner,” as she emphasized that this is a glaring lesson that the successful development of offshore wind projects in Taiwan must be judiciously heeded by the Philippines in the targeted rollout of its own OSW installations.

She highlighted “in the case of Taiwan, what we learned was that: their Ministry of Environment has veto powers on the no-go zones.”

In the Philippines, prospective offshore wind developers indicated that some of the service contracts (SCs) awarded within portions of the Batangas-Mindoro stretch may straddle or might intrude on some part of marine protected areas as navigation channels – especially for their logistics requirements during construction period; while some may cut across sites needed for grid connection of their facilities.

Until this time, however, there is no specific policy laid down yet by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) if some of the awarded service contracts will be cancelled or if some developers will eventually need to abandon their projects because they would be encroaching into fragile habitats of marine resources or if they would be disturbing fish or bird sanctuaries.

For Taiwan, the siting for offshore wind projects had been well thought out — and sponsor-firms have also been apprised early on as to which areas are not allowed for installations; that way, they will no longer need to spend for pre-development activities before running the risk of being ultimately eased out from a particular area.

It was emphasized that part of the government’s critical role and need for balancing act is to assure that the use of ocean spaces is not poorly planned and the State must not ignore any prospective irreversible damage that may be wrought by these facilities on protected zones.

In Taiwan’s offshore wind industry, Danish multi-disciplinary engineering and consulting firm NIRAS conveyed that apart from the typical environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA), there are also supplemental documents that the lenders may require from developers for them to achieve successful financial closing.

Typically, these supplementary lenders’ information package (SLIP) may include: biodiversity and ecosystem impact assessment; critical habitats assessment; ecosystem services review impact assessment; biodiversity action plan; cumulative impact assessment; fisheries livelihood and restoration plan as well as climate change risk assessment.

The Philippines is targeting initial megawatt-output from offshore wind plants by 2028, hence, all policy improvements are already worked on, so the mistakes of other markets which plunged into this development foray could already be avoided.