The Philippine government is exploring the possibility of tapping into a Japan fund under the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM) that is managed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), for planned pilot venture into hydrogen that maybe pursued by the country moving forward.

According to DOE Director Patrick T. Aquino, the JCM-underpinned business model is also being experimented on by other countries in the Southeast Asian region - including the demonstration projects being pursued by Malaysia and Laos.

“In terms of what we’ve seen, the government of Japan really provided a lot of support to their industries – whether on the application of hydrogen for transport, whether on the support for industries,” he said.

The energy official indicated that while the Philippines does not have a luxury of cornering government financial support in proving the commercial viability of innovative technologies like that of hydrogen, available funding from offshore peers could be the way forward.

“In terms of having bilateral demonstrations, for the Philippines - there are opportunities. There’s the JCM, so there’s an opportunity for us to do some demonstration projects,” Aquino stressed.

The energy official qualified “it will depend on the Philippine government side on how they want to proceed – but what’s clear to us, let’s say for a grant, the JCM might be more applicable – so carbon credits, that’s the approach being taken.”

He emphasized that the JCM framework had already been dangled by the Japanese government to the Philippine RE sector – but these have been in other installations like geothermal as well as waste-to-energy technologies.

And to widen its scope to prospectively cover the eventual rollout of blue or green hydrogen innovative technologies in the Philippine energy sector, proposals have been raised to the Department of Energy (DOE) to review the application of JCM agreements in the country.

“In the previous administration, there was already a working framework – there are a couple of projects that already benefited from this – mostly renewable energy. So what our Japanese counterparts have been saying is that: we might want to revisit the composition – the JCM and go through that mechanism again for possible application to hydrogen,” he expounded.

Aquino opined that leaning on to JCM fund could be a feasible pathway for eventual hydrogen rollout in the Philippines, especially with the massive offshore wind potential of the country – which Japan could eventually utilize to accelerate its green hydrogen production.

“The end-users of all these hydrogen -- whether it’s green or blue will be to decarbonize or to lessen the fuel requirements – to shift them away from the conventional technologies, so that goes along with JCM criteria,” he noted.

In the case of the Philippines, what are currently seen as potential applications for hydrogen will be for “load balancing or energy storage – that’s the thing that we see hydrogen would be playing a role on in our energy system.”