San Miguel: From Coal Dependence to Renewable Solutions

One of the coun­try’s largest elec­tric­ity pro­duc­ers—one that is heav­ily re­liant on coal—sur­prised mar­ket watch­ers re­cently by an­nounc­ing a strate­gic shift away from the cheap but en­vi­ron­men­tally dam­ag­ing power source. At the same time, San Miguel Corp. (SMC) said it would be adding re­new­able en­ergy to its power port­fo­lio, us­ing tech­nolo­gies that would sig­nif­i­cantly cut…

Big users tap so­lar, waste-to-en­ergy op­tions

They are among the heav­i­est users of en­ergy—to power shop­ping malls, fac­to­ries or mine sites. They can opt to buy ev­ery­thing from power pro­duc­ers but they now find it sen­si­ble to con­vert free re­sources around them—such as sun­light or agro-in­dus­trial waste—to meet more of their en­ergy re­quire­ments. It’s not a cheap process but the cost…

Turmeric growing at Citicore's solar farm in Clark, Pampanga

Power play­ers bet big on RE tech, in­no­va­tion

The coun­try’s power play­ers are lead­ing the charge into re­new­able en­ergy (RE), rolling out projects to meet grow­ing de­mand while keep­ing an eye on the fu­ture with in­vest­ments in in­no­va­tion and new tech­nolo­gies. These in­dus­try movers in­clude AC En­ergy Corp., which is look­ing at proven so­lu­tions it can de­ploy at scale, and Aboitiz Power Corp.,…

RE play comes to the stock mar­ket

While the coro­n­avirus pan­demic dragged down the do­mes­tic econ­omy to its worst re­ces­sion in his­tory last year, hurt­ing prof­itabil­ity of many com­pa­nies, there was one com­pany that de­fied grav­ity in the stock mar­ket. The main-share Philip­pine Stock Ex­change in­dex (PSEi) shed 8.64 per­cent last year, but the stock price of this com­pany soared by 304…