Gov’t urged to carry out RE provisions right away

The Asian Development Bank is urging the Philippine government to accelerate the implementation of the mechanisms and incentives provided for under the Renewable Energy Law to boost the development of the clean energy sector.

“(The Philippines) already has a very comprehensive renewable energy law. It’s important to put it into practice soon. And that’s the key thing…. You have something, you should start working on it, and later on, we can fix or round off the edges in case there are edges,” said S. Chander, chair of ADB’s energy committee.

Signed in December 2008, the Renewable Energy Law was a landmark piece of legislation considered to be the first and most comprehensive of its kind in Southeast Asia.

This legislation was said to be the envy of most other countries because it provided the proper legal and policy frameworks, as well as incentives, for the promotion of renewable energy.

However, there have been lags in implementing the mechanisms and incentives provided for under the law, due to a number of factors including the change in the administration last year. It was only last May that the recommendation for the final feed-in-tariff rates was submitted to the Energy Regulation Commission for review and approval.

And to really move the industry forward to meeting its goals, Chander stressed that the Philippine government must strive to impose more stringently the provisions of the law, help renewable energy developers get longer loan maturities for their projects and put in place a more systematic data-gathering system to validate the country’s resources.

On its part, the ADB will help developing member countries (DMCs) like the Philippines overcome a number of challenges being faced by renewable energy developers, Chander said.

In particular, ADB is helping drive down costs by catalyzing enough projects to increase volumes and to ensure that manufacturers will have incentives to invest further in research and development. ADB hopes to increase the throughput and manufacturing volumes to bring down costs of deploying the renewable energy technologies, Chander said.

At present, the Philippine government is trying to secure $1 billion worth of loans from the development bank to fund key renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects in the country, an ADB executive said.

Once the loans are approved, the amount will be rolled out within a three- to four-year period. The $1-billion loan will add to the existing $250 million in concessional loans that the Philippines received via the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), said Samuel Tumiwa, principal planning and coordination specialist at ADB.

These ADB loans, amounting to $1.25 billion, are expected to help leverage an estimated $2.75 billion worth of investments needed to implement key programs and projects that would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.