Clean and renewable energy company First Gen Corp. on Wednesday disclosed its plan to spend $20 billion to bring its power generation capacity to 13,000 megawatts by 2030.
“We view First Gen’s diverse portfolio of clean and renewable energy sources as a key enabler to a greener electricity grid. Our target is to grow our low-carbon energy portfolio to 13,000 MW by 2030, of which 9,000 MW will be renewables,” First Gen chairman and chief executive Federico Lopez said during the company’s annual stockholder’s meeting.
First Gen has around 3,500 MW of power capacity.
“The reason we are putting it as a 2030 target is we’re aligning it with the DOE’s [Department of Energy] forecasted demand,” First Gen president and chief operating officer Francis Giles Puno said.
“If the government is saying this is the demand growth, then we’ll have to keep up with that demand growth. It is aligned with that. But more importantly for us, we’ll have to have an organization and an initiative on all our platforms to be able to address that expected demand of energy in the country by 2030,” Puno said.
First Gen plans to increase its wind power capacity by 5,100 MW from 150 MW and add 1,500 MW of solar generation capacity to its existing 12 MW. It also aims to add 2,000 MW of capacity from natural gas and 700 MW from geothermal projects.
First Gen said it would also expand its hydro capacity by 300 MW from 134 MW and add 40 MW to its battery energy storage system.
The company is allocating $1.1 billion for 2023 capital expenditures, including for acquisition of the 165-megawatt Casecnan hydroelectric power plant for $526 million.
It is allocating $403 million for activities of Energy Development Corp., $90 million to complete its integrated liquefied natural gas terminal project in Batangas and $50 million for the Aya pumped storage project.
First Gen executive vice president and chief commercial officer Jon Russell said the LNG terminal construction was completed in March, and the company had filed an application with the DOE for a permit to operate and maintain the project.
Russell said the LNG terminal would be in the dry commissioning phase until September, when the floating storage regasification unit would be commissioned.
He said the wet commissioning phase would begin in September and would involve LNG receipt, storage and regasification, which would then be used to power the gas plants. First Gen is about to issue a tender in the next two weeks for about 160,000 cubic meters of spot LNG cargo.
“That’s the cargo we’ll use for the wet commissioning, and then the first supply to power plants electricity using LNG,” Russell said.
“We’re in parallel discussions for medium to long-term supply. Those are ongoing with different entities, but for now, we are prioritizing the spot tender so we can get the project in operation then the medium to long-term contract will then follow. We anticipate those will start by 2024 at the earliest,” he said.
First Gen officials said natural gas is a reliable bridge to renewable energy sources as natural gas plants could quickly generate power and complement the intermittency of solar and wind power plants.
“This can also complement other renewable energy sources like hydro and geothermal, providing energy security throughout the transition,” Puno said.
