The government must craft a program that will repurpose existing coal-fired power plants into natural gas-fired power plants.
Agnes Devanadera, Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) chairman, said this will maintain the confidence of investors and avoid a scenario where power plant assets will be stranded.
“When we did not have coal power plants, we convinced people to invest. And now that we are seeing that renewable energy is something that we should have, are we just going to make these investors go and not be protected? Future investors will not believe us if that’s the way we will handle (the situation),” Devanadera said.
She noted a program that will repurpose coal-fired power plants will also be good for consumers as this will sustain the interest to develop power plants.
Devanadera said for coal investments whose construction have not started, proponents must be asked to study the possible conversion of their projects to natural gas projects.
For existing coal-fired power projects, Devanadera said their owners and the Department of Energy can come up with a policy and possible cost projections for the conversion.
She added conversion is being done in other countries. She did not elaborate.
As of end-2021, the total installed capacity of on-grid coal-fired power plants stood at 11,669 megawatts (MW) or 43.4 percent of the energy mix connected to the grid while the total capacity of off-grid coal-fired power plants was at 15 MW or just 2 percent of the entire capacity not connected to the grid.
The capacity of natural gas-fired power plants connected to the grid stood at 3,453 MW or 12.8 percent of the mix. No such type of power plant is currently servicing off-grid customers.
