The Department of Energy (DOE) hopes to collaborate with the Carbon Trust and the Global Wind Energy Council to harness wind power to produce clean energy.
Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi said his group will hold a virtual workshop on Wednesday to “determine how the Philippine government and the wind industry could jointly work towards realizing the country’s massive offshore wind potential.”
“Harnessing our wind energy resources would open up a limitless resource of reliable and indigenous clean energy, bringing us closer to our energy security and sustainability goals. This development would also redound to the benefit of Filipinos through job generation, public health benefits, and the influx of significant inward capital investment,” he said.
The energy department, through the workshop, hopes “to secure a more robust investment environment for the Philippine wind sector and it recognizes the challenges in marine spatial planning and enhancing capabilities to address technical challenges over floating wind applications, turbine operations in challenging climatic conditions and the necessary grid reinforcements in realizing the full potential of offshore wind in the Philippines.”
The virtual activity will gather renewable energy and infrastructure experts, offshore wind industry practitioners, and investors to exchange views on policy, regulatory, and technical issues surrounding offshore wind development, as well as on potential areas for long-term sectoral collaboration.
Under the National Renewable Energy Program, the DOE aims to “attain wind power grid parity with the commissioning of 2,345 MW additional capacities.”
In 2019, the share of renewable energy in the country’s generation mix stood at 20.8 percent from 23.38 percent in 2018. Coal continues to dominate the mix at 54.6 percent , followed by gas at 21.1 percent and oil at 3.5 percent.
The country’s RE goals have yet to be fully achieved since Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act was enacted in 2008.