Leading Green Financing: Greening the Blue Planet
The road to finding the reliable sources of renewable and alternative energy faces multiple challenges, including limited awareness among entrepreneurs and the business community, limited technical expertise and conservative financing approaches.
Aligned with its corporate values, BDO found ways to change the banking outlook in partnership with the International Finance Corporation’s sustainable energy finance program. BDO created a unit focused on green funding to drive market awareness and interest, conduct employee training and develop global partnerships.
Moving with the Winds of Change
Alternergy founder Mr. Vicente Perez the abundance of unharnessed renewable sources in the Philippines. He took it upon himself to create the change. His vision was to develop a robust renewable energy portfolio. With his team, Alternergy is now considered the pioneer in wind farm development. But the company was yet to embark on its biggest venture, a 54 MW Pililia Rizal Wind Farm, under Wind One Corporation, an Alternergy subsidiary.
Alternergy Wind One Corporation strives to live up to its quadruple bottom line standards that each project has to be profitable, is a good place to work in, has a positive environmental impact and creates social value to the community. Aside from providing clean energy to some 66,000 households, the wind farm opened various business opportunities, facilitated infrastructure, harnessed technical learning and promoted tourism.
Like most sustainable energy projects, financing was one of the hurdles the company had to overcome. Through the Sustainable Energy Finance Program, BDO assumed a leadership role in creating a loan syndication process, designing a project finance structure and providing consultation throughout the funding process.
“I have to thank BDO for being there for us. BDO helped us by believing in the project and the team.”
-Gerry Magbanua, Finance Director Alternergy Wind One Corporation
A Replicable Model: Transforming Waste to a Sustainable Source of Power
As the country’s largest rice producer, the communities of San Jose City in Nueva Ecija were faced with the problem of the disposal of rice husks. Instead of focusing on the problem, the millers focused on the waste product’s potential for generating power. This ushered the birth of San Jose City I-Power Corporation.
It took 3 years to build the country’s first rice husk-fired power plant. Finding a financing model that balanced the needs of the stakeholders and financing requirements of the project posed a great challenge. The solution presented itself in 2010, as the International Finance Corporation facilitated the partnership with BDO’s Sustainable Energy Finance Program.
The project accomplished two very distinct but turned out to be very complementary goals to solve the community’s rice husk waste disposal and to generate sustainable power that is sold to the national grid through the feed-in-tariff system. Moreover, the establishment of a sustainable power plant encouraged other rice millers to follow suit. Currently, another 12MW rice husk-fired power plant being constructed in Talavera, Nueva Ecija.
