The government is looking for at least 50 sites all over the country for solar-powered as part of its effort to provide cheaper and cleaner electricity.
Agrarian Reform Gil de los Reyes said that the Department of Agrarian Reform will offer attractive rental to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARB) who will lease out their farms where solar-powered plants are to be built.
Just recently, a Memorandum of Agreement was signed by DAR and the Sunconnex Solar Powered Agri-Rural Communities Corp., (SC-Sparc).
Under the MoA, SC-Sparc will enter into a long-term lease contract with ARBs for the use of land over a period of 20 years.
Rentals will be paid directly to the ARBs with the farmers cooperative getting a small percentage of the lease cost.
De los Reyes said the Sparc program would benefit not just the farmer-beneficiaries but the whole country as well in the form of clean energy from solar power.
“This is another opportunity for our agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) to earn extra income by way of leasing out portions of their farm for the up of solar-powered plants with a generating capacity of 5-10 megawatts each,” De los Reyes said shortly after the signing of the MoA at the DAR office.
The program is an example of a private public partnership encouraged by the government, he said. It was initiated under the DAR-Department of Agriculture-Department of Environment and Natural Resources convergence initiative with the SC-Sparc
Sparc Corp. is a joint venture between Filipino investors and Sunconnex Capital BV , a part of the Sunconnex group of from The Netherlands with over 20 years of experience in the solar power business in Europe and North America.
DAR Undersecretary for Support Services Jerry Pacturan, whose office will be in charge in identifying the sites, said that farmlands of agrarian reform beneficiaries are prioritized in the identification of sites to give them a chance to earn extra income. He added, however, that they may consider non-ARB areas.
To qualify as a site for the solar-powered plants, Pacturan said the area should have a minimum of five hectares of open space. It should also be generally flat, unproductive, non-irrigated, and not more than five kilometers from the nearest substation with 69-kilovolt transmission line.
Source: Journal News, Photo Credit (energia-online.eu)
