Following the groundbreaking of the Philippines’ largest desalination plant in Iloilo City, Metro Pacific Water Solutions (MPW) plans to source a portion of its energy from a waste-to-energy (WtE) facility.

In a forum on Wednesday, Feb. 26, Jose Mari Lazo, chief finance officer of MPW, shared that the ₱5.5-billion desalination facility would not only bring treated water to 700,000 residents in Iloilo but also pose benefits to the commercial sector.

“The consumption would be about more or less 90 percent domestic while the 10 percent would go to commercial, but this would depend on the areas of economic development,” he said.

The facility, which broke ground on Feb. 25, is set to be completed by 2027.

It is expected to produce 66,500 cubic meters of potable water daily, in partnership with French water and waste management firm SUEZ and local construction firm JEMCO.

Lazo clarified that “this is a purely private sector investment by Metro Pacific Investments Corporation (MPIC).”

“What we’re trying to resolve here is the water scarcity in the Philippines. With this desalination project, we hope to have a benchmark project that we can deploy across the Philippines…We believe that by following Iloilo City’s lead in this project, we can ensure that we can create a future where water scarcity is not a barrier to economic development in an area like the Philippines,” he elaborated.

A WtE facility is already being pursued to complement the project by powering a portion of the desalination plant.

“We’re exhausting all measures to make sure that this is affordable for the Iloilo residents. We’re not only employing cost-efficient technology but at the same time combining the usage of renewable energy (RE),” Lazo said.

“As a matter of fact, there’s a project in Iloilo that turns waste to energy, and the output of that project will be utilized by diesel,” he noted.

According to Lazo, the WtE initiative would be a collaboration between MPIC and the Iloilo City government.

“Right now, they have about 470 tons of garbage per day, and they will take that to put into the facility and process it so when it becomes energy in the form of biomass, it will be utilized for the plant [operations].”

The WtE facility is expected to have a capacity of approximately 3.5 megawatts (MW) and will utilize eco-friendly, clean processes to address the lifespan concerns of the Calahunan landfill.