Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte (Facebook)

Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte has expressed high hopes for green power—particularly the development of wind, solar and other variable renewable energy (VRE) sources.

This, after the Marcos administration ordered the country’s hastened transition from fossil fuel to clean and sustainable energy.

“VRE development promises to be the new wellspring for investments from overseas green conglomerates as global investors start appreciating the heightened efforts by our government to fast-track the energy transition to clean and sustainable energy, in step with President Marcos’ commitment to provide clean, cheap and ample power to Filipino consumers on his watch,” Villafuerte said.

Villafuerte issued this statement following the recent inauguration of the Manila office of the Danish firm Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP), which committed to invest an initial $30 million or about P1.7 billion for the preparation and pre-development activities for the first of its four offshore and onshore wind power projects in the Philippines.

During the formal opening of the COP office at the Bonifacio Global City (BGC), its officials said that its four would-be wind farms are projected to require total investments of $5.5 billion or P319 billion and generate a combined 2,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Villafuerte said the first of COP’s four projects in the Philippines is the $3-billion, 1,000-MW offshore wind (OSW) farm that the Danish investor is putting up on San Miguel Bay in his home province of Camarines Sur, where he used to be governor.

By 2028, Villafuerte says this OSW farm on San Miguel Bay will become the first and biggest wind power project in the country and that will employ an estimated 2,500 people. 

San Miguel Bay sits on the borders of both Camarines Sur and Camarines Norte, but the project is actually located on this bay’s southern part in Camarines Sur. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) has pointed to the “strong interest” of private sector investors, especially from countries considered as the global leaders in offshore wind (OSW) technology such as Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom (UK).

For its preparatory and pre-development activities on its San Miguel Bay project in CamSur, COP officials said they have, among others,  already filed their application for pre-development environmental compliance certificate (ECC) with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), completing wind measurement at the project site, participating in the green energy auction (GEA) of the DOE, and ensuring grid connectivity of their generated capacity to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) network.

Villafuerte noted that after emerging as a hub for ecotourism and extreme sports, Camarines Sur will likely become the country’s center for wind energy generation as the COP-funded San Miguel Bay wind farm is just one among at least 16 facilities harnessing this RE source in his province.

“This pioneering wind farm to be built by Danish infrastructure investment on San Miguel Bay, along with 15 more OSW projects, will help the Marcos administration accelerate its planned transition from fossil fuel to renewables for the radical reduction of  the Philippines’ carbon footprint,” Villafuerte said.

“These 16 wind power projects in CamSur, which have a total potential capacity of 7,668 MW of electricity,  support the Marcos administration’s decarbonization goal of significantly increasing the share of indigenous sources like wind and solar in our country’s energy mix,” he said.