Team Energy to put up power facilities using renewable energy

MANILA, Philippines—Japanese-backed Team Energy plans to put up eight greenfield power plants that can generate over 55 megawatts of electricity from solar, biomass and mini-hydro resources.

Team Energy president and CEO Federico Puno said the company has been planning to develop new sites in Northern Luzon, including Benguet, to put up five power facilities using hydro resources. Each facility is targeted to generate at least 5 MW.

Team Energy—which was put up by a consortium of Japanese firms Marubeni Corp. and Tokyo Electric and Power Co.—also targets to put up two solar facilities in Bulacan and Batangas, which will produce 10 MW each.

For its biomass project, the company wanted to put up a facility that could generate 11 MW, using coconut leaves or any other types of leaves as its feedstock. This type of renewable energy resource is preferred as it can be used as a baseload facility and is not weather-dependent unlike the other resources, according to Puno.

Puno said Team Energy would spend roughly $2.5 million to $3 million to produce a megawatt of these resources. For a 56-MW renewable energy portfolio, this means that the company will have to invest as much as $168 million, or roughly P7.2 billion.

Puno further disclosed that the company has been targeting to start the construction of some of the renewable energy facilities this year, upon the completion of all the feasibility studies for these planned power plants.

The construction of solar facilities may likely be prioritized since these would be faster to put up, to be followed by the hydropower plants which, Puno said, might take a while. The biomass facility may follow after, or as soon as Team Energy can resolve the sustainability of the feedstock supply.

Puno said the company would likely proceed despite the absence of feed-in-tariff rates, which would spell out the economic and financial viability of renewable energy projects in the country.

Under the feed-in tariff system, renewable energy developers are assured of future cash flows, as electricity end-users will be charged fixed amounts to cover the production of energy from renewable sources. With this in place, utilities can spread the cost of clean power among its customers.

Team Energy is currently one of the largest independent power producers in the Philippines, with over 2,000 MW of installed generating capacity. It owns and operates the 1,200-MW Sual and 700-MW Pagbilao coal-fired power plants in Pangasinan and Quezon, respectively. It also owns a 20-percent stake in the 1,200-MW natural gas-fired Ilijan plant in Batangas.