ERC rejects FIT rate for ocean technology

By Lenie Lectura – January 4, 2021
from Business Mirror

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) denied the petition filed by the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) for feed-in-tariff (FIT) for electricity generated from ocean energy resources.

NREB is the body tasked by the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 to recommend policies, rules and standards to govern the implementation of the law, which granted fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to RE projects.

The ERC instead directed NREB to file a separate petition for a new ocean FIT rate based on Tidal In-stream Energy Conversion Technology, which is the predominant Ocean Technology in the country.

“Majority of ocean power projects awarded with service contracts by the Department of Energy [DOE] uses Tidal In-stream Energy Conversion.

The Commission, therefore, found it reasonable to use the said technology, instead of the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), as the representative project for the determination of the FIT rate for Ocean Technology, pursuant to Section 5 of the FIT Rules,” ERC Chairperson Agnes VST Devanadera said.

The ERC recognized that there is more information available on the tidal in-stream energy conversion technology which can be the basis for the calculation of the initial FIT for ocean energy, instead of OTEC whose operations have not yet reached commercial scale.

The ERC previously deferred the approval of the FIT for ocean technology when it issued its decision on the FIT rates in 2012 because NREB proposed an OTEC as the representative project and there was no OTEC plant in commercial operation yet at that time, and only a handful of pilot projects have been launched in the world.