China firm keen on putting up 1,500-MW coal power plants

MANILA, Philippines — A Chinese company is putting up several coal merchant power plants in the country with combined capacity of around 1,500 megawatts (MW) as part of a deal with China’s state-run National Energy Administration (NEA), Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said.

“We have talked with NEA of China to help us put up merchant power plants in the Philippines to trade electricity in the spot market to put a downward pressure on the price,” Cusi said adding that, “no investor would be willing to invest in that magnitude without off-takers.”

Merchant plants are power plants that sell their output to the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM).

As part of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two nations, China Energy Development Corp. is putting up several demonstration plants — two in Cebu and one in Luzon.

In his meeting with China Energy, Cusi said the power plants would be coal-fired, but China Energy assured that the technology would be ultra supercritical, meaning it would require less coal per megawatt-hour leading to lower emissions.

“China Energy is scouting three possible sites in Cebu and then in Luzon, they are also looking at several sites,” he said. “They are calling it as demonstration plants. They will build two 150-megawatt (MW) plants in Cebu and one 600-MW in Luzon.”

Once plans for the power plants are finalized, the projects would be declared as energy projects of national significance, Cusi said.

In June last year, President Duterte signed Executive Order (EO) 30, which give priority status to energy projects.

The EO also created the Energy Investment Coordinating Council (EICC) to streamline the regulatory procedures affecting energy projects of national importance.

“I guaranteed them that the projects will be declared as energy projects of national significance and we will finish the permitting process in 30 days provided they have completed the submission of documents,” Cusi said.

The projects will meet the additional power requirements starting 2020 until 2022 since the agency set 10,000 MW of additional capacities during that time, Cusi said.