FIRST GEN TO SPEND $1.27B THIS YEAR FOR RE, NATGAS PROJECTS
FIRST Gen Corp. is setting aside $1.27 billion in capital expenditures (capex) for 2024.
The funds will mainly be used for the further development of their various renewable energy (RE) and natural gas projects, First Gen Chief Finance Officer Emmanuel Antonio Singson said.
“The capex is $1.27 billion for this year,” Singson said.
“Around $526 million we already paid for the Casecnan hydro plant, while about $670 million is allocated for Energy Development Corp. (EDC), and the rest will be used to finish our liquefied natural gas and gas projects,” he told reporters at the sidelines of the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting.
First Gen said that it would bring to commercial operation seven new power facilities with a total capacity of 83 megawatts (MW) by the end of the year to help augment the country’s power supply.
The seven power projects are being developed by subsidiary EDC.
Of these, four are geothermal power plants with a combined capacity of 82.6 MW while three are battery energy storage system projects with 40 megawatt-hours of total capacity.
“We completed the 29-MW Palayan binary plant, and it just started operating right when there’s a need for supply. That’s the new capacity that’s come in,” First Gen President and Chief Operating Officer Francis Giles Puno said.
“We hope that adding these modest capacities into the grid from clean energy sources will help ease our country’s need for more power supply without creating stress to the environment,” Puno said.
First Gen aims to have 13,000 MW (or 13 gigawatts) of total capacity by 2030, or an additional 9,500 MW in natural gas and RE.
The company said that of the additional capacity, roughly 7,500 MW will come from new RE projects that will also include hydro, solar and wind.
First Gen shares on Friday stayed flat at P17.92 per share. ED PAOLO SALTING