CAMARINES Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte has said he wants the Philippines to leverage its spectacular rise among the world’s emerging markets as a hotspot for renewable energy (RE) investors in securing much larger overseas financing for wind farms and other power projects harnessing renewables in the country.

“The government should exert its best effort in seeking more RE investments overseas from clean energy champions such as Denmark, more so now when rich economies that are also the world’s worst polluters had committed $300 billion only—or less than a fourth of the $1.3 trillion that disaster-prone economies including the Philippines had asked for in annual climate financing support—during the 29th annual COP (Conference of Parties) summit held last year in Baku,” said Villafuerte, National Unity Party (NUP) president.

Worse than this pledge for the relatively paltry amount, he said, is that the affluent member-states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) committed during COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan last December to triple this annual climate financing target from the current $100 billion to $300 billion by 2035 yet.

“So, with the sub-par, long-in-coming pledge of $300 billion for climate financing from heavily-polluting industrialized countries during the COP29 in Baku, one way for our government to secure more funds for climate financing is to leverage the Philippines’ status as the second most attractive destination for RE investors among emerging markets to find overseas investments elsewhere for generating electricity from wind, solar and other renewables,” Villafuerte said.

With apparently insufficient local funds for RE projects to accelerate the Philippines’ switch from fossil fuel to clean energy sources, Villafuerte said, “The government can hope to achieve our country’s ambitious decarbonization goal only by getting ample funding from overseas investors for more RE projects to seriously wean our country away from fossil fuel in our transition to a low-carbon, if not carbon-neutral, economy.”

The Philippines has made a spectacular leap as an attractive place for RE investments from 20th place among 110 emerging markets in the world in 2021 to No. 4 in 2023 and to an even higher No. 2 last year, according to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) Climatescope report for 2024.

Next to India, which placed No. 1, the Philippines leaped two spots to No. 2 out of 110 emerging markets in the 13th annual edition of the Climatescope report.

BloombergNEF noted that the Philippine government has established a target of 35% RE in power generation by 2030, and “the Philippines stands out as the only emerging market in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) to have all of the RE policies surveyed by Climatescope—auctions, net-metering schemes, tax incentives and a clean energy target—in force.”

The Philippines has attracted $5.2 billion-worth of RE investments over the past five years, according to BloombergNEF, but just 7% of this total amount came from overseas investments.

In 2023, RE investments was estimated by BloombergNEF at $1.98 billion, or nearly 88% more than the year-before total investments of $1.058 billion.

In Climatescope’s Top 10 list, the Philippines, at No. 2, was ahead of China, Kenya, Romania, Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, Namibia and Guatemala.

The Philippines has an ambitious target of raising the share of RE sources in our country’s energy mix from the present 22% to 35% by 2030 and an even higher 50% by 2050.

Villafuerte said the potential sources for more RE projects in the Philippines include Denmark, a leading country in RE production and usage, whose investors have started big-time projects on renewables in the country, including in Camarines Sur.

Also, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a recent briefing in Makati City that Denmark is interested in raising its offshore and onshore energy investments in the Philippines, in support of our government’s efforts to diversify the national power mix and increase the share of renewables in the domestic power generation, Villafuerte said.

Villafuerte said that Rasmussen’s bullish outlook is backed by actual projects as the Danish firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) became in 2023 the first fully foreign-owned entity awarded with wind energy service contracts by the Department of Energy (DOE) after the Philippines opened up the RE sector to full foreign ownership.

With headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, CIP is a top global RE investor, particularly specializing in wind power, that has raised 25 billion euros and a project pipeline of 120 gigawatts (GW) of power.

Villafuerte said that through its local affiliate, Copenhagen Infrastructure New Market Fund Philippines Corp. (CINMF), this Danish firm is investing an estimated P130 billion to P170 billion in offshore wind (OSW) projects in Camarines Norte and Camarines Sur, with capacity projected at 1,000 megawatts (MW); and two more in Northern Samar (with a capacity of 650 MW) and in Pangasinan and La Union (350 MW).

The DOE awarded a wind energy service contract (WESC) to CINMF in March 2023—the first 100% foreign owned company granted a WESC—for the exclusive right to explore and develop an area in San Miguel Bay in Camarines Sur and Camarines Norte for generating wind power.

CINMF executives project the development, installation, operations and maintenance of 110 to 160 OSW wind turbines in San Miguel Bay to create some 1,500 direct jobs from construction, engineering, and technical services; plus about 1,900 indirect jobs from the manufacturing components.

It expects to start building this San Miguel Bay project by the third quarter of 2026 and targets its commercial operation by the third quarter of 2028.

Villafuerte earlier proposed to the government to further streamline our investment rules on clean energy development ventures, especially relating to the process of obtaining permits at the local government unit (LGU) level, for the Marcos administration to keep on track with its ambitious decarbonization goal of generating half of our country’s energy needs from renewables by 2040.

Villafuerte had served as three-term governor of CamSur, which promises to emerge as the country’s center for wind energy generation with at least 16 projects, including the CINMF-funded wind farm in San Miguel Bay, on this variable renewable energy (VRE) source that are projected to generate a combined 7,000 megawatts (MW) of clean energy once all of them are up and running.

He said that another VRE project is the onshore wind farm in the municipality of Libmanan, which Aboitiz Power Corp. (AboitizPower) is building under a joint venture (JV) with the Dublin, Ireland-based Mainstream Renewable Power Corp.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Mainstream has green energy projects with a combined capacity of 100 GW, and has raised energy and related infrastructure investments totaling 19 billion euros from over 140 international institutional investors.

Under the Philippine Energy Plan (PEP) 2020-2040, the country is projected to need an additional capacity of 92.3 GW of RE power by 2040 that will require total investments worth about P5.8 trillion.

Villafuerte said the government needs to generate more RE investments, especially in VRE sources like wind and solar power, which are relatively faster and cheaper to deploy.

Aside from helping the DOE meet the government’s long-term target of generating 35% of the domestic electricity requirements from renewables by 2030 and an even higher 50% by 2040, Villafuerte noted that these 16 CamSur wind farms will further stimulate economic activity and tourism in the province and create several thousand jobs.

“These green or clean energy projects will likewise boost CamSur’s tourism business as these would-be wind farms are expected to attract tourists to the green project sites,” he said.

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Ryan Ponce Pacpaco