New ethanol facility begins operations in the Philippines
In November, Green Future Innovations Inc. began operating its PHP6 billion (US$147.8 million) integrated ethanol facility in Isabela, a province in Northern Luzon, the Philippines. The new facility will boost the Luzon grid’s power capacity and provide additional ethanol supply to local oil firms. According to Reynaldo P. Bantug, Green Future president and CEO, the company still has to ramp up production at the ethanol plant to its full capacity of 200,000 liters a day, or around 50 million liters a year. The company’s biomass facility also still has to maximize output. The facility can generate up to 19 megawatts of electricity. Bantug said the goal is to achieve full capacity by December 2013.
“We just started last November 19 and we are ramping up to that [full capacity] level. Our target for this year is to produce about 80% of the [ethanol plant’s full] capacity.”
The company, owned by Japan’s Itochu Corp., JGC Corp., Philippine Bioethanol and Energy Investments Corp., and the Taiwanese holding company GCO, said it would initially sell on the spot market, although it hopes to forge long-term power supply contracts with local oil companies.
The Philippine government believes that the development of alternative fuels like ethanol will play a crucial role in helping ease the impact of rising global oil prices on the local economy. From the current 10% ethanol-90% gasoline blending mandate, the plans to raise the ethanol blend ratio in the near future. (December 10, 2012)
