ACEN expects to spend $8B on clean energy projects

ACEN Corp. has estimated to spend up to $8 billion for the rollout of its 8 gigawatts (GW) portfolio of clean energy projects in the Philippines by 2030.

“If you look at the rough average cost of solar and wind per megawatt (MW), it is about $1 million per MW, approximately. Solar is about $700,000 per MW at least in the Philippines, then wind is in the $1.4 million to $1.6 million per MW,” Eric T. Francia, president and chief executive officer of ACEN, said during a media briefing last week

“So 8 GW would mean around $8 billion if you just applied that rule of thumb,” he said.

Mr. Francia noted that around 600 megawatts (MW) of the capacity are already operating and around 1,000 MW or 1 gigawatt (GW) are under construction.

“Seventy percent of that [under-construction projects are] soon to be operating. We’re still looking at well over 6 GW of incremental capacity beyond our operating and under-construction plants. So, if you take all of that, that would be around six and a half or $7 billion of incremental capex (capital expenditure) that we would be requiring to roll out the 8-GW assumption or outlook that we have,” Mr. Francia said.

He added that ACEN would also need to ramp up the rollout of renewable energy projects as it is targeting to have 20 GW by 2030.

“Today, we already have over 4 GW of capacity both operating and under construction,” Mr. Francia said. “Remember we aspired for 5 GW of RE by 2025. I certainly hope that within the next 12 months or so that we would go past that 5-GW mark,” Mr. Francia said.

“If we stay at 1 GW, we’re not going to get to 20 GW. At some point, we need to step up the pace,” he said, adding that it would “probably” happen at the middle or end part of the decade.

He said ACEN would have to hasten the pace closer to at least 2 GW per year. — Ashley Erika O. Jose