Govt Urged to Set Up Solar Parks
Solar Philippines said the government should push developing solar parks in the country, a strategy that was successfully implemented in India and can significantly help bring down the cost of solar while increasing the scale of renewable energy (RE) development in the Philippines.
Speaking at The Manila Times forum titled “Business Conference on Shared Prosperity with Renewable Energy: Opportunities for India-Philippines Engagement” on Thursday, Leandro Leviste, president and chief executive officer of Solar Philippines, expressed admiration to India for having the “greatest ambitions” for its renewable energy transition.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced India’s plan on meeting the goal of 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 with 175 gigawatts (GW) targeted to be pursued before the end of 2022.
This targets, as Leviste described, are “very ambitious” and “admirable.”
“Prime Minister Modi wants India to have 450 gigawatts of renewable energy installed by 2030, while the current power demand in India is only at 200 gigawatts. He wants to have almost 1.4 times the current power demand on renewable energy by 2030. That is truly very ambitious and admirable goal,” Leviste said.
Leviste believes that such goal will be achieved because of “very competitive” prices for renewable energy that have resulted from India’s auction system.
“Perhaps, we will be fortunate to see by 2030 that Prime Minister Modi’s target of 450 gigawatts could in fact be surpassed,” he added.
If the Philippines will only apply the same ambition that the India has for its energy mix of having more than 40 percent more in their current peak demand in their solar capacity by 2030, “with the current peak demand in the Philippines of 16 gigawatts, we should have at least 22 gigawatts of solar installed capacity by 2030,” according to Leviste.
However, the constraints for such growth targets in India as in the Philippines is land and transmission, Leviste said, noting that India has developed solar parks in various areas in that country to alleviate this problem.
“Some of them by the government, some of them by the private sector, distinct from the ownership of the power plants but solar parks where any foreign company can get on a plane in India, participate in a competitive auction and without having developed land and permits themselves, simply avail of the shovel-ready permits land and permits that have been provided,” he explained.
Providing focus to eliminate these barriers is “instrumental” in lowering the cost of solar in the Philippines, Leviste said, adding this goal can be also achieved here, especially if policymakers will only fully factor in the implication of the declining cost of solar and storage technologies in forecasting the country’s power supply in the next five to 10 years.
“We are hopeful that the supply of land and permits for renewable energy projects in the Philippines can follow after the Indian model. Once that supply is available then perhaps the cost of solar in the Philippines before land can indeed go below P2 per kilowatt hour (kWh),” Leviste said, as compared to India’s P1.35 per kWh cost.
Furthermore, Leviste stressed on India’s strategies in heightening its efforts on renewable energy transition, can be possibly adopted in the Philippines in a bid to likewise increase the scope of renewable energy here.
“The whole world is benefitting from the great strikes the India is taking to increase the scale of solar development because that scale is helping drive down the cost that all of us even here in the Philippines will benefit from once the cost will make solar with storage the most competitive source of power in the coming years,” Leviste added.
Source: manilatimes
