COMPETITION authorities have raised concerns over the government’s Green Energy Auction Program (GEAP), noting that the way the biddings were structured could have affected investor participation and opened opportunities for collusion.
Findings and recommendations of a competition impact assessment (CIA) were shared with the Department of Energy (DOE) last week, the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) said in a statement on Friday.
“The discussion centered on previous GEAP auction rounds and how its design could be further improved to better foster pro-competitive principles,” the antitrust watchdog said.
Such assessments, the PCC said, are conducted to help government agencies determine if their policies and regulations foster competition.
For the GEAP, the evaluation flagged the geographic segmentation of auctions by island group, the representative plants used in determining Green Energy Auction Reserve (GEAR) prices and the publication of price caps and staging of pre-bid conferences.
“The CIA noted that some of these features could have led to limited bidder participation and posed possible opportunities for collusion,” the PCC said.
“Generally, the CIA suggests careful evaluation of future auction designs, considering the policy objective of achieving the most competitive energy tariffs while increasing renewable energy share in the country’s generation mix.”
The Energy department was said to have responded that the GEAP was under constant review and development, and that auction design refinements had been implemented to safeguard competition.
Future auctions could still be done on an island group basis to address local energy needs and minimize service delivery issues, the DOE said.
GEAR prices, meanwhile, were said to be determined by the Energy Regulatory Commission, and the process would be kept transparent and “responsive to evolving technologies.
The GEAP, the department said, is critical to achieving the goal of renewable energy accounting for 35 percent of the country’s power mix by 2030 and further to 50 percent by 2040.
Four auction rounds focused on particular technologies have been held since 2022, and a fifth is currently under way.
