MOC: RE Project Development
The supply side of the RE Act: how the State awards the right to develop a
renewable resource, what contract that right takes, and how the resulting project
is permitted and built. Authority is Digest: RA 9513 — Renewable Energy Act of 2008
read with the
permitting mandate of Digest: RA 11234 — Energy Virtual One-Stop Shop Act
— nearly everything here runs
through Energy Virtual One-Stop Shop (EVOSS)
. The chain on this page collapses into one document:
the 2024 revised omnibus guidelines absorbed the 2019 omnibus guidelines, the
2020 competitive-selection round, and the 2022 nationality amendment. Note that
the 2024 circular’s own effective date is recorded but unverified — see
plan/2026-07-31-lineage-date-integrity.md — so the lapse dates of the three
documents nested under it should not be relied on to the day.
Belongs here: a circular about acquiring, holding, or building out an RE service or operating contract — award mode, contract type, stage timelines, eligibility, permitting. Circulars about what happens to the energy once the project runs belong in MOC: RE Support Mechanisms or MOC: RPS and the Renewable Energy Market .
RE contracts and their award
- Digest: DC2024-06-0018 — Revised Omnibus RE Guidelines
— Revised Omnibus RE Guidelines. The operative regime for awarding and administering RE contracts and registering developers, across eight resource-specific contract types (biomass, waste-to-energy, geothermal, solar including floating, hydropower including pumped storage, ocean, onshore wind, and offshore wind), each with its own pre-development and development periods on a 25-year base term renewable for 25. Award is by Open and Competitive Selection Process over pre-determined areas or by direct application; a Certificate of Authority grants one-to-three-year exclusivity ahead of contract signing; applications run through EVOSS on a five-day evaluation clock. Opens solar, wind, hydro, and ocean to foreign participation while reserving water appropriation, and lets a developer elect RE Act or CREATE Act incentives irrevocably. Start here for any current question about getting or holding an RE contract. (2024)
- Lineage: replaces Digest: DC2019-10-0013: Omnibus Guidelines Governing the Award and Administration of RE Contracts (2019) (2019 — the previous omnibus guidelines: six contract types, the blocking system of 30-second meridional blocks, the Energy Application Management System, and the performance bond as a condition precedent — itself consolidating thirteen prior issuances reaching back to Digest: DC2009-07-0011: Guidelines Governing a Transparent and Competitive System of Awarding Renewable Energy Service/Operating Contracts and Providing for the Registration Process of Renewable Energy Developers , the original 2009 circular that first operationalized RA 9513’s RE contract mandate with the Blocking System, the OCSP and Direct Negotiation award modes, the 25-plus-25-year term structure, and the geothermal FTAA route), which was itself amended by Digest: DC2022-11-0034 (RE Act IRR §19 Nationality Amendment) (2022 — deletes RE Act IRR §19(A) and amends §19(B) on a DOJ opinion that solar, wind, hydro, and ocean are inexhaustible and so outside the constitutional foreign-equity limit; the origin of RE Sector Nationality Restrictions as they now stand). Also displaces Digest: DC2020-11-0024 (2020 — the OCSP3 round for geothermal and hydropower pre-determined areas) by implied repeal: the 2024 circular’s repealing clause is a generic “inconsistent with” provision that does not name it.
- Digest: DC2023-06-0019: Guidelines Governing the 4th Open and Competitive Selection Process (OCSP4) — OCSP4 guidelines. The rules for the fourth competitive selection round, covering 20 pre-determined areas — three geothermal (160 MW), fourteen hydropower (~88 MW), and, for the first time in an OCSP, three wind. Sets the 60-day application window, the three-envelope filing, the scoring weights (legal pass/fail, work programme 40%, technical 20%, financial 40%), the fee schedule, and the failure condition that reopens an area to direct application. Start here for how a specific award round was run, rather than for the standing contract regime. (2023)
Offshore wind
- Digest: DC2023-05-0013 — Implementing Guidelines of Executive Order No. 21 (EO 21-IG) — EO 21 implementing guidelines. Sets the three-stage structure of an offshore wind project — pre-development (permits, wind, bathymetry, metocean and geological surveys, road/port/grid capacity assessment, feasibility study, financial closing), construction, and commercial operation through to decommissioning under an abandonment plan — and puts the permitting agencies on a deadline to submit their complete permit lists in EVOSS format, with fees rationalized and reviewed on a three-year cycle. Start here for the project lifecycle and the inter-agency permitting duties. (2023)
- Digest: DC2023-06-0020 — Policy and Administrative Framework for Offshore Wind Development (OPAF) — Offshore Wind Policy and Administrative Framework (OPAF). The framework the guidelines above required: four policy objectives, a mandate on the EVOSS Secretariat to strip out duplicate and legally baseless permits, integration timelines for permitting agencies with and without online platforms, the Philippine Offshore Wind Databank, a Smart and Green Grid Plan from the network service provider, foreshore lease coordination, a Philippine Ports Authority port development plan, marine spatial planning to resolve protected-area overlaps, and a route for contract holders in no-build-up zones to reconfigure. Start here for offshore wind administration and siting (Offshore Wind (OSW) , Smart and Green Grid Plan (SGGP) ). (2023)
Technology-specific development policy
- Digest: DC2022-02-0002: Policy Program for Enhancement of Biomass WTE Development — Biomass waste-to-energy development programme. Treats biomass WTE as baseload renewable capacity: defines the conversion pathways, sets eligibility as DOE registration plus compliance with the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, the EIS system, and the toxic-wastes law, issues one REC per MWh, and — the operative commercial term — sets a 20-year minimum PSA for a DU-embedded facility while exempting it from competitive selection. Start here for WTE project economics and its regulatory carve-outs (Waste-to-Energy (WTE) ). (2022)
Up: MOC: Regulations