MANILA, Philippines — After having been stalled twice, the public hearings for the feed-in-tariff (FIT) charges to be levied on renewable energy (RE) projects will finally re-open next week.

Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) executive director Francis Juan advised media that hearings on the FIT will resume October 25 in Cebu at 9 a.m.; and October 26 at the ERC head office in Pasig City.

Deliberations on the FIT charges have been suspended twice by the ERC following the technicality questions raised by the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) on the publication of the hearing notice relative to the FIT application of the National Renewable Energy Board.

The ERC will be re-opening the public hearings amid escalating tension because of the colossal subsidy claims posed by opposing groups, while NREB has been hoisting assumptions that integration of RE in the power mix will result in big savings.

It is also coming at a time when Energy Secretary Rene D. Almendras set out a marching order for NREB to “review” the FITs of more expensive technologies, primarily solar.

The NREB’s claim of P130 billion savings, however, is seen by some project developers as a “dangerous precept” because that is like giving cue to the regulators that the FIT mandate is no longer needed if RE plants can really thrive competitive versus the conventional technologies.

The NREB filed the FIT application in May, but there was no progress since then because of the legal issues raised against the case. Expectations for approval of the FIT charges across emerging RE technologies will be 2012.

The FIT charges for cheaper options, like hydro and biomass, have long been settled to be attaining grid party sooner, hence, much of the opposition are actually set on their more expensive counterparts.

In fact, prospects of grid parity for cheaper technologies, such as hydro, are already prompting some RE developers to move ahead with their projects even without the FIT because they can already compete in the market.

It can also be gleaned that one application for rates of a biomass developer at the ERC was just set at less than P6 per kilowatt hour (kWh), lower than the P7.00 per kWh FIT being applied for that technology category.

The RE developers’ favorite battering target when it comes to cost comparison is coal – since it has been the preferred solution of the Department of Energy (DoE) to solve the power system’s larger capacity baseload problems