Aboitiz Power eyes European partner in carbon storage venture (Sabong News)

Listed firm Aboitiz Power Corporation is in talks with a European company as its prospective partner for experimental venture in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to pare carbon emissions, primarily at its coal-fired power facilities. “We’re looking at more realistic ways to reduce emissions – carbon capture systems – we’re in discussion with a European entity to put a model in the Philippines and looking at replacing coal as fuel for the existing burners of our coal plants,” Aboitiz Power President and CEO Emmanuel V. Rubio said. The company executive has not named the European firm yet, but he hinted that the entity that are talking to has CCS systems in place in “oil rigs in the North Sea – collecting carbon from their flaring systems.” Rubio nevertheless acknowledged that while the easy part is capturing carbon, “the more challenging portion is where to store or inject the captured carbon.” He specified the targeted CCS technology deployment is one of the pathways in concretizing its mid-century net zero goal in line with the Paris Agreement agenda to limit global warming risks. The planned CCS experiment, according to Rubio, will complement the company’s rollout of mass-scale renewable energy (RE) investments that may top 3,700 megawatts by the turn of the decade. Part of the RE investment terrain being mapped out by Aboitiz Power is to eventually have these generating assets as “baseload” alternative to thermal power generation complemented with battery energy storage systems (BESS), which is now a flourishing trend in the clean energy deployments across markets. “As regard to the path to net zero, I’m still maintaining that there’s no one size, fits all approach to bring us to net zero emissions,” the Aboitiz Power chief executive stressed. At this stage, he indicated that the company already tapped a consultant “who developed net zero pathways with some entities here and abroad; and we found the roadmap too generic and with conditions that to us, sort of meaningless to actually adopt something that is too generic; it’s going to be lip service if we’re going to do that.” For Aboitiz Power then, he stated that “We need to understand first how it will look like for business like ours — on how it will impact to our customers, communities and our country.” On the conventional lens of project developments, he emphasized that RE installations still thrive as the best option to achieve decarbonization, which is also the calculated game plan they have been setting on blueprint. “It has always been solar, wind, hydro and all of these are actually now being developed. We’re exploring, of course, opportunities to participate in GEAP (green energy auction program); and in retail,” Rubio conveyed. He further noted “We’re also growing our geothermal by investing in Tiwi for the binary plant which will give us additional 15 megawatts.” This includes “additional wells that PGPC (Philippine Geothermal Production Company) is drilling.” Rubio highlighted “For us, a clear roadmap will be our path toward achieving new capacities of 3,700MW for renewable energy and bringing into fruition our desire to use gas as baseload – hopefully one in Visayas by 2026-2027.” “We believe in taking a well-calculated and long-term approach toward decarbonization…part of that is to deliver our renewable energy investment aspirations,” he said.