Citicore Renewables unit gets $100-M loan for expansion

MANILA  -A unit of Citicore Renewables Energy Corp. (CREC) has secured a $100-million loan from a Singapore-based debt financing firm to fund its aggressive portfolio expansion in the next five years, beginning with four new solar projects in Batangas province.

In a statement on Friday, CREC said it had signed the loan agreement with Pentagreen Capital, an infrastructure debt financing partnership established by banking giant HSBC and global investment firm Temasek.

The initial $30 million of the amount will be used to fund the construction of the Lumbangan, Luntal, Bolbok 1 and Bolbok 2 solar plants in Batangas, as well as the operations of the existing Arayat 1 and Arayat 2 plants in Pampanga province.

These six facilities have a combined capacity of 490 megawatts (MW) and are expected to add 691 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of renewable energy capacity into the Luzon grid, according to CREC.

“Pentagreen’s partnership with Citicore Renewables is a vote of confidence in our ability to scale up, enabling us to achieve our planned 1-GW project rollout this year, in line with our 5-GW in five years roadmap,” said Oliver Tan, president and chief executive of CREC.

Once the projects are completed, output will be sold to long-term and spot market customers in an effort to help achieve the government’s goal of increasing the share of renewables in the Philippine energy mix from the current 22 percent to 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040, CREC noted.

At present, the company has 680 MW of committed renewable capacity.

It was also recently awarded a 916.58 MW of clean energy capacity in the Department of Energy’s second Green Energy Auction Program conducted in July.