The Department of Energy (DoE) wants renewable energy sources to account for a bigger chunk of the country's power generation mix in the light of growing concerns on global climate change.

“Now with a 43 percent contribution to the energy mix, renewable energy will be up to 50 percent by 2020 while our target for energy efficiency is a minimum of 10-percent and a maximum of 15-percent,” said DoE assistant secretary Mario Marasigan.

However, he pointed out that this will not be an easy goal to attain since RE is still being developed not only here in the Philippines but in the rest of the world. He said the development of RE sources will take time.

“Maintaining the 60 percent (energy self-sufficiency target of the Philippines) is a big challenge for DoE and we believe renewable energy will play a big role. The only limitation that we see in terms of renewable energy is the technical limitations of some of the resources,” he said.

Marasigan cited wind which is the most intermittent among all renewable energy sources. “That means at 30 to 35 percent power factor then you can see that 10-megawatt could only generate 3 to 3.5-megawatt equivalent in terms of actual generation with regard to time,” he said.

He said the hydro power development also poses some challenges.

“Run of river hydroelectric power plant is not changeable and not intermittent as your minimums and maximums. But we cannot harness typhoons like what we had last weekend. What we can for run-of-river hydros are the long-term or at least three months of continuous precipitation with not so much volume and run-of-river will run for at least nine months within the year,” he said.

But Marasigan believes that over time, these limitations of RE would be addressed.

“About 50 percent of 60 percent self-sufficiency is the biggest contribution we can provide and this means that it will also account doubling our renewable energy capacities by 2020. We’re now at a level of 5,500-megawatt equivalent of renewable energy and then doubling than in at least 10 years will account for more than 10,000-MW already,” he said.

He said there is a greater potential for the Philippines to have a more diversified energy mix.

“Among Southeast Asian countries we have the best diversified energy sources having natural gas and renewable energy from geothermal, hydro “which contributes now to about 34 percent of the power generation mix” “particularly from hydro and geothermal,” Marasigan added.