More than a decade ago, the contours of renewable energy investments in the Philippines had been framed and are being re-shaped through the years – and the nuances of project developments had always been complicated and tricky.
The company’s investment experience had not been easy and seamless – but the bold steps it had taken offers wealthy narrative on how investor-counterparts could navigate the terrain of RE developments in the Philippines – especially to the ‘uninitiated’ and the starting players who can’t lean on the deep-pockets of ultra rich parent-firms.“At Alternergy, in the next five years, we expect to build a total of 1.4 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Wind power development is another flourishing investment sphere for Alternergy; and currently taking off from its drawing boards are its Pililla 2 wind farm project in Rizal province; the 10MW Alabat Island wind farm prospect in Quezon province; and the Calavite offshore wind project in Mindoro, which is being pursued in partnership with a subsidiary of multinational energy giant Royal Dutch Shell – and once advanced into commercial fruition, that will yield capacity generation of about 1,000MW.
Manifestly, what sets Alternergy apart versus peers in the RE sector is that: it develops the projects from concept to reality; while some players often flip projects once they are awarded with service contracts or after getting through the permitting phase; while other companies with conglomerate-backing typically acquire projects just to build up their portfolio.
He added “at the time, there were no banks who were willing to lend on a ‘project finance’ basis – and while some banks were willing to lend, their standard requirement was: give me a corporate guarantee. And we didn’t have that because we don’t have a parent company.”