MPIC goes into renewable energy

MANILA, Philippines - Pangilinan-led Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) is venturing into renewable energy for the first time through a waste-to-energy project that will address issues on solid waste management and increased demand for electricity.

The infrastructure conglomerate is looking at creating a portfolio of waste-to-energy facilities with a generating capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) in the coming years, company executives said.

MPIC president and CEO Jose Ma. K. Lim said the company has partnered with technology provider Global Green International Energy, an affiliate of a US entity that has built numerous waste-to-energy plants in Korea and smaller countries in Southern Pacific.

Lim said MPIC will invest up to P700 million for its first plant in Tagum, Davao del Norte. The facility will be able to produce two MW of power and 10,000 liters of biodiesel per day, with an option to expand it to six MW.

“Waste is an ongoing problem. We have been studying solid waste management in the last several years and the problem is always political: not handling waste in an efficient manner and the municipality receiving waste will not receive [waste] from other areas,” Lim said.

“It will help especially at the local level on the power and certainly on the waste side. It is something the board of MPIC felt the company should do,” said MPIC chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan.

Lim said the first waste-to-energy facility will allow the company to test the efficiency and operational requirements of the business venture before investing in a big scale for facilities that can produce a combined 300 MW and 500,000 liters of biodiesel, Lim said.

Construction of the waste-to-energy plant, which will use the pyrolysis technology, is seen to start late this year and completed in six months.

“There are other large cities that are ready to enter into similar agreements,” Lim said.

MPIC is into power generation and distribution through Manila Electric Co. (Meralco). The country’s largest power distributor targets to build a power generation portfolio of up to 3,000 MW of fuel-efficient and reliable baseload and mid-merit plants that will help assure adequate supply of cost-competitive power to customers.

Betty Siy-Yap, chief financial officer of Meralco, said the company initially looked at a wind energy project but it was scrapped.

Aside from the wate-to-energy project, MPIC’s parent firm First Pacific Co. Ltd. is also pursuing power production using the bagasse in Roxas Holdings Inc.’s La Carlota sugar mill in Negros Occidental, Pangilinan said.