Sponsor-firms of offshore wind farm projects will have to prepare for a tedious process of securing two-tiered environmental compliance certificates (ECCs) from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) – and that shall comprise of an interim ECC during pre-development phase; then an enhanced ECC at commercial development stage of their projects.

According to Energy Undersecretary Sharon S. Garin, the guidelines for the application process as well as warranted issuance of ECCs to offshore wind installations will be firmed up before the end of this year.

“For now, we are just setting what we need to do and what we will require from the developers during pre-development stage… that’s an environmental impact assessment, instead of studies and evaluation to be done at ECC, this is a mere checklist that they have to submit as documents. By submitting those documents, we can issue them an interim ECC,” she explained.

Then when the outcome of their wind resource assessments would warrant commercial development, she conveyed that the next step for the project developers will be to apply for enhanced ECC.

“That (enhanced ECC) will require new set of requirements from the DENR… we are scheduling talks for the enhanced ECC which will be required once you start on the development stage. Hopefully, we will have it within the year,” Garin highlighted.

She acknowledged that the two-tiered ECC to be enforced on the offshore wind developers will be a unique approach because this has not been done yet with the other renewable energy (RE) technologies.

“In other technologies, there’s no interim ECC, so you are only required in the development stage and they require that for financing,” she said, while specifying that with the interim guidelines issued under DENR Administrative Order. No 2024-02, the State is hoping that the entire process will end up beneficial to the investors and the requirements for the ECC would be streamlined.

Garin emphasized that for the interim ECC, consultations with the local government units (LGUs) will not be required yet -- that will only happen when the investor will already seek ECC for commercial development.

“We do not require LGU consultation in the interim ECC. In the enhanced ECC, that’s when the hard work starts,” she asserted.

Nevertheless, the industry players are being perturbed with more questions rather than answers in the new order issued by the DENR, especially so since there was no public consultation carried out before that policy was enforced.

“We are scheduled to do an orientation workshop with the developers, especially the developers who signified they want to have their first kilowatt by 2028…, it’s not like we’re trying to make it difficult for the developers but our country will need to protect its resources also,” she stated.

On the process of application, Garin indicated it is not clear yet if the government will eventually decide on a ‘programmatic ECC’ or if they will diverge from that permitting model given the hurdles being encountered by floating solar developers in the ECC being applied for them by the Laguna Lake Development Authority.

“For now, there are many ideas. We have learned also from the LLDA system which is programmatic. We have seen problems in the programmatic (ECC), but we still need to review how do we assess in the offshore side,” she stressed.

At this stage, it is still not clear also to the DOE if it will be the developer that will apply for the ECC; or if this can be done by a government entity similar to what is happening in the floating solar development space. (MMV)