Renewable energy to account for biggest share in power mix

MANILA, Philippines – Amid growing concerns on global climate change, the Department of Energy (DOE) is eyeing to make renewable energy sources account for the biggest share in the country’s power generation mix.

“With a 43-percent contribution to the energy mix, renewable energy will make up over 50 percent by 2020 and our target for energy efficiency is a minimum of 10 percent and a maximum of 15 percent, ” DOE assistant secretary Mario Marasigan said.

He, however, pointed out that this will target is not an easy one as RE development is still in its initial stage not only here in the Philippines but in the rest of the world.

“Maintaining the 60-percent target is a big challenge for DOE and we believe renewable energy will play a big role. The only limitation that we see in terms of renewable energy is the technical limitations of some of the resources,” he said.

“For instance, wind is the most intermittent among all renewable energy sources. That means at 30 to 35 percent power factor – then you can see that 10 megawatts could only generate three to 3.5 megawatts equivalent in terms of actual generation with regard to time,” he said.

He said hydropower development, for instance, poses some challenges.

“Run of river hydroelectric power plant is not changeable and not intermittent as your minimums and maximums. But we cannot harness typhoons like what we had last weekend. What we can for run-of-river hydros are the long-term or at least three months of continuous precipitation with not so much volume and run-of-river will run for at least nine months within the year,” he said.

But Marasigan said over time, these limitations would be addressed.

“About 50 percent to 60 percent self-sufficiency is the biggest contribution we can provide and this means that it will also account doubling our renewable energy capacities by 2020. We’re now at a level of 5,500-megawatt equivalent of renewable energy and then doubling than in at least 10 years will account for more than 10,000-MW already,”  he said.

He said there is a greater potential for the Philippines to have a more diversified energy mix.

“In terms of the contribution of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, at the moment our immediate target is to attain our 60-percent target of energy self-sufficiency. And I would say the Philippines is having a very good diversified energy program, as among the different Southeast Asian countries we have the best diversified energy sources having natural gas and renewable energy from geothermal, and hydro – which contributes now to about 34 percent of the power generation mix ,” he added.

He also admitted that power to be generated from biomass would need to be fully harnessed.

“For instance, for sugar mills they’re using bagasse for power and heat requirement, some cement factories have converted some of their power requirement from rice husks to rice hulls. Some of them even use other forest residues. Biofuels is also catching with biodiesel also at two percent – which account for more than 94 million liters of capacity in the market although our current production is already beyond the 300-million liters. For ethanol, we may have very little production at the moment at 39 million liters compared with our requirement of at least 200 million liters a year for the five-percent requirement mandated by law,” he said.

Marasigan said there is a need to focus on these developments to be able to make the long-term solutions to impending power supply challenges in the future.

“The greater concern is in the long-term. And for us in the DOE, the biggest challenge is how to maintain the 60-percent energy self-sufficiency in the next 20 years. And you can imagine that all over the urban areas there are always vertical constructions and for every vertical construction whether residential or commercial this would require one to two-megawatt in terms of active power requirement,” he said. –Donnabelle L. Gatdula (The Philippine Star)