Citicore Renewable Energy Corp. is in talks with foreign investors to develop offshore wind projects totaling 3,000 megawatts, a top executive said.
“For wind, our focus is offshore wind, but it takes longer to develop of about 7 to 8 years,” CREC president Oliver Tan said.
Tan said CREC secured seven offshore wind service contracts from the Department of Energy with a total potential of three gigawatts.
“We are in talks, and I will stop from there. We are in talks because of the high capex [capital expenditures]. We are in talks with several interested investors,” he said.
Tan said offshore wind is relatively new in the Philippines and requires an investment of about $3 million per MW to construct.
The wind contracts are in North Luzon, Guimaras and western Zambales.
“We started already…We need to install the wind map for the project to be bankable. We need to gather a minimum of one to two years—one year of wind resource for it to be bankable. That’s the immediate next step,” Tan said.
He said the World Bank’s initial resource assessment for wind would be helpful to investors.
“So the World Bank already came up with the initial resource assessment, and based on the assessment the Philippines has a potential of 35 GW of wind resource,” Tan said.
Among CREC’s wind projects are Citicore Wind Cagayan Inc.’s 360-MW offshore wind in San Antonio, Zambales; 510-MW wind project in Zambales and Bataan; 440-MW Pagudpud-Sta.Praxedes-Claveria wind project in Ilocos Norte and Cagayan; and 630-MW and 460-MW offshore wind projects in Guimaras.
“So we have that for the long term. For the short term, we have five GW of solar projects that we will complement with battery… We’re targeting about 1 GW for this year, and then every year we’ll be commissioning at minimum 1 GW,” Tan said.
CREC is preparing an initial public offering this year to finance its 1-GW solar projects with a capex requirement of about $800 million.
