Pioneer renewable energy firm Alternergy Holdings Corporation (Alternergy) recently inked a term sheet with Yuchengco-led Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) for P1.0 billion financing that shall be extended to the former’s 28-megawatt (dc) Solana solar farm development in Hermosa, Bataan.
The solar farm project is owned by Alternergy, and its business unit developing that facility is Solar Pacific Energy Corporation, which is the overall corporate vehicle housing the solar ventures of the group.
According to RCBC Corporate Banking Group Head Elizabeth Coronel, the project financing to the Alternergy solar project “aligns with our sustainable finance strategy which has so far channeled more than P70 billion in funding support to various sustainable projects.”
Way back in 2020, RCBC stood as the first Philippine bank to have sounded off its intent to stop financing coal-fired power projects; and since then, it has refocused its lending strategy to clean energy technologies.
Owing to that shift in lending paradigm, Alternergy President Gerry P. Magbanua hailed RCBC’s determined resolve on “identifying renewable energy as a priority sector.”
He emphasized that the project financing extended by the bank to their new solar venture is a manifestation of RCBC’s “growing confidence in Alternergy with total funding to our group reaching close to P2 billion to-date, especially to bankroll our solar power portfolio.”
The financing funneled to the project, he noted, will “further deepen our partnership that first began in 2015 when RCBC financed Alternergy’s 12.5MWp Kirahon solar power project in Misamis Oriental, the largest solar farm in the country at that time and the first bilateral solar contract approved by ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission).”
He narrated that RCBC “extended consecutive innovative debt financing to Alternergy’s portfolio of eight (8) large scale solar rooftop projects located nationwide, to Alternergy’s first solar battery project in the Republic of Palau, and recently to Alternergy Holdings Corporation.”
In another development, its other subsidiary Alternergy Tanay Wind Corporation (ATWC) secured height clearance from the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) for its 100MW wind power project in Tanay, Rizal.
Magbanua explained “this is a major permitting clearance for our Tanay wind power project.” With that latest permit, he indicated that they can already move headway on the project’s development phase.
Knud Hedeager, director and co-founder of Alternergy, conveyed that the height clearance bestowed by CAAP on their wind project “went through painstaking and thorough process of technical studies and consultations with government aviation authorities with inputs from international and local aviation experts.”
Following CAAP’s go-signal, he indicated that “all the wind turbine generators to be installed by our Tanay wind power project will not in any way create interference with the aviation navigational path and will ensure safety operations.”
As designed, the planned Tanay wind farm facility will be sited in Tanay in hilly and mountain-ensconced terrains with elevation of 300 to 600 meters above sea level.