The project is part of a PHP3 billion investment of AOPC to place power plants on Panay and Guimaras generating a total of 25 MW by converting wastes to energy.
Among the regions being eyed for the plants are the towns of Pavia, Pototan and Sara in Iloilo and the capital town of Jordan in Guimaras.
The plants are expected to consume an expected 48,000 to 50,000 metric tons of rice husks alone per year. These will be sourced all over Panay Island, one of the nation’s biggest producers of palay.
Rodriguez said the placing up of the biomass plants will supply cheaper electricity to the area as the plants will be embedded in the system of Anteco doing away with additional costs like transmission charges.
The plants will also produce jobs and provide additional income to host communities amounting to one centavo per kilowatt hour of the total electricity sales of the producing plants.
Rodriguez said the plants will also help rasie the income of rice millers and rice farmers because they will be the suppliers of biomass fuel for 20 years to the plants.
The AOPC is also planning to sign a memorandum of agreement with Department of Energy for setting up of three trust funds (Electrification Fund, Development and Livelihood Fund and Reforestation, Watershed Management, Health and Environment Enhancement Fund), Rodriguez said.
Perez, chair of the Regional Development Council of Western Visayas and a leading advocate of renewable sources of energy, said these projects are among those being fast-tracked to address the power supply shortfall in Western Visayas and to pave away from dependence of Panay Island to the Visayas grid which gets most of its electricity from the geothermal plants in Leyte.
