The Philippine government has awarded six contracts to Blueleaf Energy and local developer SunAsia Energy Inc for the construction and operation of floating solar parks on the water surface of Laguna Lake with a combined capacity of 610.5 MW.
According to a news release from the developers, this is the first set of Solar Energy Operating Contracts (SEOCs) to be issued by the Department of Energy (DOE), which targets 1.3 GW of floating solar projects. Each of the six contracts has a term of 25 years.
The planned developments concern the cities of Calamba, Santa Rosa and Cabuyao, as well as the towns of Bay and Victoria.
“People are worrying about competing uses of land, and in some markets, you might struggle to find land,” said Tetchi Capellan, president and CEO of SunAsia Energy. “There is a strong incentive to build on water as the Philippines gears up for an ambitious 46 GW solar energy installations in 2040 and at the same time, increase power supply in the country,” she added.
Blueleaf Energy, a portfolio company of Macquarie’s Green Investment Group (GIG), already has 250 MW of solar capacity in the Philippines and has more than 7 GW of solar, wind, and storage projects in the pipeline across the Asia-Pacific region. Last year, it signed a letter of intent (LoI) through which it pledged to significantly increase its sustainable infrastructure investments in the Philippines.
Now, Blueleaf CEO Raghuram Natarajan noted that the recent announcement of the removal of foreign ownership restrictions in the country will help attract much-needed foreign direct investments in the domestic renewable energy industry.
