The Department of Energy (DOE) has acknowledged that there would be ‘major environmental concerns’ that have to be seriously scrutinized and weighed on proposed energy projects that will traverse some stretch of the Verde Island Passage – not just with offshore wind farm developments, but even with oil and gas as well as transmission line projects.

“While service contracts have been issued by the DOE, these would be subject to environmental limitations,” Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla emphasized.

Owing to that, he noted that “the initial studies for the environmental impact would have to be undertaken and the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) will directly process these applications, so these will be important steps,” the energy chief stressed.

He qualified that the marine spatial planning (MSP), in particular, will have to assess the impact of the offshore wind projects – including incursion into seabed and how intrusive the technologies would be that will be deployed – specifically those of floating offshore versus fixed bottom installations.

On top that, Lotilla similarly indicated that the targeted transmission linkup of Mindoro to Luzon grid to partly support the offshore wind farm installations may also have to be evaluated if it will compromise ecosystems within the VIP.

“The transmission lines from Mindoro to Luzon interconnection, the data to be generated will be helpful by which routes will be most ideal for the submarine cables – in any case, the submarine cables will also not be buried, but somehow they would have an impact, and these should also be taken into account by the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources),” the energy chief stressed.

He added “the scientific data that had been accumulated over the years will be very helpful in establishing the standards as well as the case of identifying no-go zones or those zones which will allow for varying degrees of developments -- these would all be very important.”

Environment Secretary Maria Antonio Yulo-Loyzaga, for her part, stipulated that the new policy being enforced on applications for environmental compliance certificates (ECCs) requires information on the project’s proximity to protected areas as well as those that are declared as cultural and historical sites.

“We are now embedding this into our ECC process; and so for the first time in the ECC process, you will be needing to indicate how near you are to a protected area; and how near you are to a culturally and historically important site,” she said.

Loyzaga pointed out “if the institutionalization (of the ECC process near protected sites) will be successful, then it will remain even after this administration.”

The DENR chief further conveyed that on widely perceived environmental impacts of projects, the government will be enforcing the ‘offset and compensate system’ – so that project-sponsors can valuably contribute into mitigating climate change risks triggered by their facilities.

“Mitigation starts with avoidance, if you can avoid the impact, then you should. If you cannot avoid it, you need to minimize it. If you cannot avoid and minimize, then you need to restore what you can as much as possible,” Loyzaga expounded.

She added that under the ‘offset and compensate’ option, “we may first refer to actions that build value in other ecosystem areas that can overall result in a net positive impact because of some truly disruptive activity that cannot be fully addressed in the site that you’re working on.”

Loyzaga explained that under the proposed compensation set-up, “what we need to understand is how ecosystem really works and provide the interventions necessary so overall, our impacts will be net positive if that is the only thing that we can do.’

The DENR chief specified “the offset potential, if it cannot cover the total impact – you’ll need to be able to invest in another ecosystem or possibly within that same ecosystem but in a different system in order for the positive impact to actually result.”

At this point, however, she asserted that “we have not decided yet which type of method we’ll be having for a particular setting. But certainly, there is enough global practice for us to say, this is the standard approach and we will then use this to value whatever impact is being caused by specific activity. This is also a work-in-progress for us, it’s new – it doesn’t exist yet anywhere in the DENR system, so we are still creating this from zero.”