San Carlos Bioenergy Inc. (SCBI) announced that it was halting the production of Bioethanol till the issue of imported bioethanol tariff would be addressed by the government that was resulting in a monthly loss of P15 million to their business. Right now imported bioethanol from Brazil is levied only 10% in tariffs that is making their price uncompetitive and resulting in Oil Companies purchasing abroad rather than buying locally.

Bioethanol producers in the Philippines have already expressed their disgust at the government’s inaction on the tariff issue that was harming this fledgeling industry.
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The Department of Energy (DOE) has said that it has yet to decide on its stance over the control of bioethanol imports of the oil companies. Under the Philippine Biofuel Law, Oil companies are allowed to import bioethanol if the local demand is not enough to meet their requirements in order to comply with the mandatory mixing of bioethanol with the gasoline that they sell at their stations. In line with this they have said that one of the more trickier issues that they have to decide on is with regards to the issue of the price of bioethanol.
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The National Renewable Energy Board (NREB), which was tasked by the government to draft the Non-fiscal incentives part of the Philippine Renewable Energy Act of 2008 (Republic Act 9513) announced that they are wrapping up and the said guidelines will be ready for the next administration that will takeover right after the elections. June 30 is the projected date that they will finish drafting the non-fiscal incentives of the RE Law.

At almost the same time last year the implementing rules and regulations for the Philippine Renewable Energy Act had also been passed.
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Feed-in Tariff’s (FIT) draft rules were released by Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) that will regulate the establishment and approvals of FITs for the renewable energy charge (REC) collected from the consumers and paid to the renewable energy based electricity producers. Specifically energy derived from: wind, solar, ocean, run-of-river hydro power and biomass.

The FIT basically offers guaranteed payments per kilowatt-hour to renewable energy developers for the electricity they produce as an incentive for entering this business which will help them recoup their investment faster. Am not sure if this was the incentive covered in the Renewable Energy Law of the Philippines (item no. 5).
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The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) has approved last January 15th the creation of the P55 million Cavite Biofuels Ecozone applied for by the Cavite Biofuel Producers Inc (CBPI). All that’s needed now is a presidential proclamation in order to make it official as an Agro-Industrial Economic Zone.
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Former Senate Leader and current Presidential Candidate, Sen. Manny Villar, submitted a resolution (Senate Resolution 1531) last Dec 16. 2009 before Congress in support of private investment to develop frontier geothermal sites in the Philippines. Geothermal Frontier areas are those unexplored geothermal sites that the government has no resource data on.

The main purpose of this is to avert the energy crisis in the island of Mindanao which could curtail the Rural Electrification Program of the country.
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