Pragmatic energy tack necessary

While the economy marches on to become among the world’s fastest growing this year, two challenges stand out which are making the investment climate attractive to investors while transitioning to clean energy to booth.

Having a dependable electricity supply is an underlying necessity to provide the foundation for steady growth.

Stability, however, is not the sole requirement for power supply. It also has to have reasonable costs.

The path to renewable energy appears to be the most logical solution. Its potential to bring down energy cost is apparent. Go solar because energy from the sun is limitless and free. Harness the wind and it offers the same benefits.

The costs of solar panels are falling. Wind turbines, the giant spinning towers that dot the skyline, are also declining in costs.

Such technologies. however, have not reached the level needed for a sustainable supply since weather conditions still play a critical role in the delivery of electricity.

In the aspect of reliability, hydro becomes prominent particularly pumped storage which isn’t as vulnerable to the threats posed by weather disturbances to solar and wind.

The push for RE is moving ahead with planned green energy auctions, or GEA, by the Department of Energy, or DoE which will open the grid for renewables.

While it seems to be a correct step, there are several issues that must be addressed for RE to become a key component of the energy mix.

The extended GEA schedule set in August has producers of solar, wind and hydro power indicating interest to participate but urgency must be part of the equation as the leaping economy is in immediate need of supply.

Tricky road to RE

Stabilizing the supply of power while waiting for all the RE technologies to become dependable may require continued reliance on coal?

And once renewables are fully developed, will the power grid be equipped to handle the load?

The bureaucracy, of course, imposes another hurdle.

The Energy Regulatory Commission has yet to move ahead in setting rates for RE sources much less act on a regulatory framework for the transition to green energy, including among others the pricing determination methodology and cost parameters for the mon-feed-in-tariff (non-FIT) eligible RE technologies. Thus far, there’s zero policy foundation for RE from the regulatory body.

The DoE projected a 28,000 megawatt demand and supply of 50,000 megawatts with increasing share from RE.