The Philippines has long been using five main types of renewable energy – hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass. Soon we will add one more – tidal energy.
The Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC)-Renewables Corp. announced that the first ocean power plant will soon be set up in the San Bernardino Strait between Sorsogon and Northern Samar, where the Pacific enters the sea surrounding our Visayan islands.
It will be a joint project of the Philippine energy company H&WB Asia Pacific Corp. and its French partner Sabella SaS, a global leader in the marine energy industry. In 2008, Sabella was acclaimed for the first experimental marine current turbine installed in France, with its submerged DO3 turbine (with a three-meter rotor diameter), followed in 2015 with its D10 turbine connected to the French grid. For the San Bernardino Strait project this year, three to five turbines will be used. This will be the first-ever tidal energy project in Southeast Asia.
Renewable energy today makes up some 26 percent of the Philippines’ total energy consumption. For years we relied mainly on our hydro-electric plants using water released from dams. We started developing geothermal energy in Tiwi, Albay, in 1979. We now have six geothermal fields in Luzon, Leyte, Negros, and Mindanao, producing about 17 percent of the nation’s total energy needs.
But we remain heavily dependent on energy produced by coal plants. They account for about 70 percent of our energy needs today, and in the next four years, 12 coal power plans are scheduled to be built – five in Luzon, one in Visayas, and six in Mindanao. Despite our support for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in December, 2015, we have to continue with these long approved projects. We need the power that the coal plants can easily and immediately provide.
Our search for more sources of clean energy, however, continues with no let-up. We have already set up several solar plant sites in many parts of the country, on top of our wind power plants. The San Bernardino Strait plant using tidal power is the latest project in our continuing implementation of the Renewable Energy Act of 2009 and our commitment to a cleaner and healthier planet earth.