Chinese firm Tianjin Tianbao Investment and Development Corporation (TTIDC) is lining up investments of $1.3 billion in various renewable energy projects, to be carried out through its partnership with publicly-listed Filipino firm Greenergy Holdings Inc.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Greenergy Holdings indicated that a joint venture vehicle will be formed by the parties for the propounded projects which will likely yield 1,000 megawatts of aggregate capacity over 10 years.
Relative to the investment targets, the local firm emphasized that its Chinese partner sets “priority of investing up to US$ 200 million in wind energy projects within the first (two) 2 years.”
Greenergy and TTIDC disclosed that a memorandum of agreement (MOA) has already been executed -- effectively sealing the deal on the planned investments in the RE sector. It is notable that the signing of the investment plan pact has been fortuitously timed during President Aquino’s state visit to China.
For their initial investment foray, Greenergy emphasized that “the parties shall plan the establishment of the first turnkey project, a 49.5 megawatt wind energy project.”
The facility shall comprise of 33 units of wind mills that will have generation capacity of 1.5 megawatts each. It is targeted for commercial operation within one year from the establishment of the joint venture vehicle by the project sponsors.
No specific timelines were given and no site was also mentioned in Greenergy’s statement. It has not also been qualified if they are seeking to be included in the installation targets for wind as earlier endorsed by the Department of Energy.
Beyond wind power facilities, the investor group will similarly scour development opportunities in other renewable energy resources, such as biomass, solar, hydro and geothermal.
The Philippines is relatively swamped with RE investment proposals, but the single biggest milestone the developers have been waiting for would be the approval of the feed-in-tariff (FIT) that must be levied across technologies.
They noted that the FIT charges will be extremely necessarily to incentivize capital infusion in the sector, especially in advancing the developments of the less-proven technologies in the emerging RE genre, such as wind, solar and biomass.
