It may seem like a regressive step but harsh realities of tight supply predicaments tormenting the country has been prompting the Department of Energy (DOE) to greenlight coal-fired power plant projects that are not covered by the coal moratorium issued in 2020.

Following last week’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Marcos, Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla forthrightly stated that “we will still be seeing some of these coal-fired power plants being put up as late as 2028, so to that extent, it is going to affect our renewable energy targets.”

He qualified “it doesn’t mean that we are going to give up on those targets – instead, we view this as a non-linear growth for renewable energy.”

Under the country’s coal moratorium, proposed plants that were already advancing on their permitting processes as well as those that were already inching close to shovel-ready state – including blueprinted facilities with identified financing sources and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors, are excluded from the enforced development prohibition.

The series of yellow and red alert conditions that strained Luzon and Visayas grids in this year’s summer months had been generally seen by investors as signaling dire need for baseload capacity additions – and the viable technological solutions they have been seeing at this time would still be coal-fired or gas-fed generation.

Amid reinforced focus on fixing the country’s immediate need for reliable and round-the-clock power supply, Lotilla noted that the country will not lose sight on its energy transition goal that will be leaning on clean energy technologies.

On the green energy development sphere, the energy chief expounded that “renewable energy sources as a whole contribute up to 22% of the country’s electricity – and of the total power, the one source from solar and wind, constituted only around 3%, so we have a long way to go in so far as variable renewable energy is concerned.”

He emphasized that the way forward for the country then is to “continue to push with that (RE installations) - including offshore wind energy.”

On the rollout of offshore wind projects, in particular, the energy secretary reiterated auxiliary infrastructure developments that shall be pursued by the government in concretizing flow of investment-dollars in the sector.

“Here we are working together with everyone in order to achieve this. For instance, in the case of offshore wind, we’re working with the DOTr (Department of Transportation) because the Philippine Ports Authority would need to be able to come up with support ports for that,” he said.

On top of that, Lotilla highlighted the need to expand and strengthen the country’s power transmission backbone so it can ably bolster up capacity wheeling as well as manage the variability of some RE technologies – primarily those from solar and wind farm installations.