NREB sets first renewables auction

By Lenie Lectura – December 16, 2020
from Business Mirror

The country will hold its first renewable energy (RE) auction middle of next year, a move that will push for the compliance of power providers with the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) policy.

“The green energy auction committee has actually convened two weeks ago. It was the first meeting of the committee to set out the work plan for the first auction scheduled by June 2021,” said National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) Chairman Monalisa Dimalanta during an online forum held Tuesday.

There are no firm numbers yet as to the initial RE capacity that would be put up for auction. “The distribution utilities (DUs) are still verifying projections with impact of lockdown, but DOE [Department of Energy] hopes to finalize numbers by end of the year or January next year,” said the NREB official.

The green energy auction program intends to pool 2,000 MW of RE for auction, depending on the supply requirements of the DUs.

Dimalanta said the Green Energy Auction Committee (GEAC) would recommend to the DOE the capacity for auction based on the RPS requirements for 5 to 10 years.

“We still maintain the 2,000MW as working number, but this is being validated because the RPS requirements are in actual electricity generated instead of capacity,” she added.

The RPS requires DUs to source a prescribed percentage of their supply from RE facilities. This can be done through the green energy auction.

At present, the RPS level is set at 1 percent until 2022. Dimalanta suggested that this should be increased to 2.52 percent moving forward starting from 2023, to help the country achieve its 35 percent target.

Last year, RE only accounted for 20.8 percent of the country’s power generation mix, lower than the 33.9 percent RE share when the RE Act was implemented in 2008.

Of the RE share, 10.1 percent comes from geothermal, 7.6 percent from hydro, 1.2 percent from solar and one percent each for biomass and wind.

“As of last year, the share stood at 20 percent. It is almost the same for 2020 from 2019 figures, in spite of the lockdowns, Dimalanta said.

The NREB is the advisory board tasked with the effective implementation of RE projects in the country.