DOE vows completion of green energy auction

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Energy (DOE) has assured lawmakers that the third round of the green energy auction (GEA) program will be completed before the end of the year.

At a recent budget hearing, Energy Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara expressed confidence the DOE will finish GEA-3 by year-end, ensuring timely delivery of much-needed clean power.

Sen. Pia Cayetano, chairperson of the Senate committee on energy, said many investors are awaiting the launch of the next GEA round.

“We need it because this will address Sen. Risa’s (Hontiveros) and my concern, and all the other renewable energy (RE) advocates’ concerns because we’ll have the storage,” Cayetano said.

For GEA-3, the DOE will offer impounding hydro, pumped-storage hydro, run-of-river hydro and geothermal contracts with a combined capacity of 4,399 megawatts (MW).

Geothermal, impounding hydro and pumped storage hydro are non-feed-in-tariff (non-FIT) eligible RE technologies, while run-of-river hydro is a FIT-eligible RE technology.

The FIT system offers RE resources “guaranteed payments on a fixed rate per kilowatt-hour for energy exported to the distribution or transmission network, excluding energy utilized for eligible power plants’ own use,” the DOE explained.

The estimated capacities for non-FIT eligible RE technologies are 699 MW from impounding hydro, 3,120 MW from pumped storage hydro, and 380 MW from geothermal.

The target start of deliveries for impounding hydro and pumped storage hydro is 2028 to 2030 and 2024 to 2030 for geothermal.

Meanwhile, about 200 MW of capacity from run-of-river hydro is expected to be auctioned off, with target delivery slated for 2026 to 2028.

The GEA program is designed to trigger the expansion of the country’s RE capacity to support the government’s target of increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix to 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040.

The first GEA round took place in June 2022 and attracted a total of 1,996.3 MW of RE projects comprising ground-mounted solar, onshore wind, hydro and biomass.

GEA-2, on the other hand, generated a total of 3,440.756 MW of RE capacities that have been committed for development and installation from 2024 to 2026.