An offshore wind farm

The Philippines must put its best foot forward in the renewal energy (RE) arena--where it has been listed as second most attractive destination for investors--in order to entice additional foreign support, Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte said.

This, as Villafuerte highlighted the country’s "spectacular rise among the world’s emerging markets as a hotspot for RE investors".

“The government should exert its best effort in seeking more RE investments overseas from clean energy champions such as Denmark, more so now when rich economies that are also the world’s worst polluters had committed $300 billion only—or less than a fourth of the $1.3 trillion that disaster-prone economies including the Philippines had asked for in annual climate financing support—during the 29th annual COP (Conference of Parties) summit held last year in Baku,” he said.

According to Villafuerte, such investments could be used to finance wind farms and other RE projects in the country.

With apparently insufficient local funds for RE projects to accelerate the Philippines’ switch from fossil fuel to clean energy sources, Villafuerte said, “The government can hope to achieve  our country’s ambitious decarbonization goal only by getting ample funding from overseas investors for more RE projects to seriously wean our country away from fossil fuel in our transition to a low-carbon, if not carbon-neutral, economy.”

The Philippines has made a spectacular leap as an attractive place for RE investments from 20th place among 110 emerging markets in the world in 2021 to No. 4 in 2023 and to an even higher No. 2 last year, according to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) Climatescope report for 2024.

India is ranked no.1 on the list, says Villafuerte, the National Unity Party (NUP) president. 

BNEF noted that the Philippine government has established a target of 35 percent RE in power generation by 2030, and “The Philippines stands out as the only emerging market in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) to have all of the RE policies surveyed by Climatescope—auctions, net-metering schemes, tax incentives and a clean energy target—in force.”

The country has attracted $5.2 billion worth of RE investments over the past five years, according to BNEF, but just 7 percent of this total amount came from overseas investments.

In 2023, RE investments was estimated by BNEF at $1.98 billion, or nearly 88 percent more than the 2022 total investments of  $1.058 billion.

In Climatescope’s Top 10 list, the Philippines, at No. 2, was ahead of China, Kenya, Romania, Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, Namibia and Guatemala.

The Philippines has an ambitious target of raising the share of RE sources in our country’s energy mix from the present 22 percent to 35 percent by 2030, and an even higher 50 percent by 2050.