Citicore renews power supply contracts

MANILA, Philippines — Citicore Renewable Energy Corp. (CREC) has renewed power supply contracts totaling 5.1 megawatts (MW) with five clients.

The company, through Citicore’s retail arm, Citicore Energy Solutions Inc. (CESI), recently signed with long-time partners Bench Tower (through Ground18), Citystate Condominium, Eastfield, Succeed Ventures Asia, and Prince Alumer Development Corp. (Padcor) for another two years.

The renewed capacity is the same amount of energy originally committed under the Retail Competition Open Access (RCOA).

Moreover, the contracted capacity is 16 percent of the company’s clients whose contracts are expiring this year, as reflected in the REIT plan of Citicore Energy REIT Corp. (CREIT) and highlighted in its Competitive Strength under the “Secured long-term offtake agreements from reputable customers of Lessees.”

“We are grateful for the continued trust and support of our customers in the product we offer and service we provide, allowing us to achieve 100 percent of our target as early as the first quarter of 2022. We expect to continue this long-term collaboration with our existing customers and also look forward to forming new ones,” CREC president and CEO Oliver Tan said.

RCOA is a provision under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) that allows contestable customers (CCs), or those whose peak demand is within the threshold level of contestability, to freely choose their electricity supplier.

By directly transacting with power generation companies, customers can freely choose their suppliers of electricity, who can offer the most competitive price and best service suitable to their needs.

Meanwhile, CREC also closed a contract with a new commercial partner, Clear Water Ice Plant,  a cold storage facility with 24/7 operations in Mandaue, Cebu.

This contract was signed through CESI under its Green Energy Program (GEOP), which will source energy from Citicore Solar Cebu in Toledo.

GEOP, a salient point of the Renewable Energy Act of 2008, is a voluntary policy mechanism that provides electricity end-users with an average peak demand of at least 100 kilowatts (kW) for the past 12 months the option to switch to renewable energy sources and choose their own renewable energy supplier.

The Citicore group remains  firm in its  commitment to sustainability, which was further strengthened by CREIT’s Dark Green rating received from CICERO Shades of Green, a leading provider of independent research evaluation of green bond investment frameworks, as well as assessment of companies’ sustainability-linked bonds and impact reports.

The dark green rating, with CREIT as first recipient in Southeast Asia, ranks as the highest depending on the environmental soundness of green projects, long term support on low-carbon and climate resiliency.

CREIT, the country’s first energy real estate investment trust (REIT)  sponsored by CREC, is ramping up capacity to 780 MWdc by 2025, more than five times growth within the next four years.

The Citicore group – through its subsidiary CREC – currently operates eight solar plants across the country with an aggregate installed capacity of 163 MW, all of which are 100 percent contracted.

It has a pipeline of 1,500 MW of renewable energy projects to be developed over the next five years.