Power generation firm Energy Development Corp. (EDC) said the government should consider fast-tracking the retirement of coal plants or expanding the recently implemented moratorium on coal-fired power plant projects to address the dominance of coal in the current energy mix and achieve a proper transition to more renewable energy (RE) use.
Erwin Avante, EDC chief financial officer, said in a briefing yesterday the country expects about 10 gigawatts of coal installed capacity by 2040 despite currently- placed mechanisms to increase RE investments.
“There are a lot of incentives now as well as mechanisms that encourage investors like us to further increase our RE capacity, but I think talking about transitioning to cleaner energy, we need to address the elephant in the room which is coal,” Avante said.
EDC said the Department of Finance’s recently announced multi-billion dollar energy transition mechanism that is backed by the Asian Development Bank will help in fast-tracking the retirement of coal plants as well as the declaration of both foreign and local banks to stop granting loans to coal energy projects.
“We are very hopeful that the next administration will be able to continue whatever the current administration has as far as supporting the renewable energy. The current admin is very supportive of RE and actually they’ve put in place a lot of frameworks. Hopefully, they will be able to continue that and probably consider more to better ease the transition to more RE moving forward,” Avante said.
