SURE to invest $90 million on biomass project

LIPA, Batangas, Philippines — Japanese-backed SURE (Solutions Using Renewable Energy Inc. will invest about $90 million for the construction of 30 megawatt (MW) worth of biogas/biomass power projects in the near term.

SURE spokesman Clarence de Guia told reporters during the inauguration of the company’s first biogas power plant using pig’s waste here that funding for the projects in the pipeline over the next two years will be sourced through a combination of debt and equity.

He said they are likely to tap financing from local banks such as Metrobank, Bank of Philippine Islands and UnionBank. They may also seek financing assistance from multilateral financial institutions such as Asian Development Bank and World Bank.

De Guia said the proposed 30-megawatt plant is on top of the four biogas/biomass projects the company is currently undertaking.

He said SURE, in partnership with MG Leasing and the RLU Group of Companies of the Umali family, has installed a 400-kilowatt (kw) waste-to-energy facility in Silangan farm, one of the first industrial-scale biogas plant that has combined heat and power application in the Philippines.

The other three ongoing projects of SURE are located in Bukidnon, Nueva Ecija and Laguna.

The four projects, De Guia said, will have total capacity of 1.5 MW and will cost more than $3 million. Funding for these projects will come from MG Leasing.

But the SURE official said the capacities of these plants could still be expanded.

“This plant can still be expanded depending on the need and the expansion of the farm. It all depends on the farm,” he said.

Aside from the four ongoing projects, De Guia said they also have another build-operate-transfer (BOT) project with San Miguel Corp. (SMC) in Vietnam with a capacity of 1.2 MW.

SURE is a joint venture with MG Leasing Corp. of the Japanese power firm Marubeni which is engaged in developing bioenergy projects.

The company is also into other renenewable energy development projects such as solar and mini-hydro.

“We have pipeline projects. Long-term, what we want is to have a centralized or a bigger capacity, our thrust is to have the most diversified renewable energy portfolio. We’re looking at mini-hydro and other forms of renewable energy,” De Guia said.

Earlier, SURE had partnered with Pepsi Cola Products Philippines Inc. for the installation of a state-of-the-art 1.2-MW, rice husk- and wood chip-fired cogeneration power plant at a cost of $2.7 million.

Once completed in January 2011, the project will mark the first time a soft drink bottling plant in the country will integrate a green cogeneration power facility in its complex.

De Guia said the cogeneration project for Pepsi Philippines earlier earned an award from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as one of two clean energy investment opportunities in the country that show the most promising prospect.

SURE won the award at the end of the first USAID-Private Finance Advisory Network Clean Energy Investor Forum, where five other renewable energy firms were selected finalists in the business plan competition.