Author: PPD Team Date: 09/05/2025
The Rockefeller Foundation and a group of international partners—ACEN Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation, Keppel, and GenZero—are launching a pilot project in the Philippines to demonstrate a new model for replacing coal with clean energy.
The project will focus on the early retirement of the South Luzon Thermal Energy Corporation (SLTEC) coal plant, which will be replaced by a mix of solar, wind, and battery storage systems.
This initiative is part of the Foundation’s Coal to Clean Credit Initiative (CCCI), which uses a financial tool called transition credits. These credits operate similarly to carbon credits. Companies earn them by replacing coal-fired power with clean energy. The credits can then be sold to generate funding for the transition. The approach is designed to accelerate the retirement of coal plants while ensuring a just transition for local communities.
Verra, a global nonprofit that certifies verified carbon units, has officially approved the methodology for transition credits under the CCCI framework. This makes the Philippines project the first to use these credits under a certified system. Verra’s rules are designed to ensure that transition credits are high-quality, verifiable, and tied to measurable pollution reductions.
The SLTEC plant, located in Batangas, sits in a densely populated area that also faces high unemployment. Replacing it with clean energy could help prevent 9,900 pollution-related deaths annually, avoid 640,000 lost workdays due to illness, and create an estimated 29,000 permanent jobs in the clean energy sector. The Rockefeller Foundation estimates that shutting down 60 similar plants by 2030 could unlock USD 110 billion in public and private investment, generate USD 21 billion in broader economic benefits, and save emerging economies up to USD 8.3 billion annually in electricity costs.
To maintain transparency and integrity in the use of transition credits, The Rockefeller Foundation has provided a USD 600,000 grant to the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM Limited). The funding will support the development of a high-integrity threshold for transition credits, and help ensure that the rights and needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are respected in project design and implementation.
The project in the Philippines is intended to serve as a replicable model for other countries seeking to accelerate their energy transition. If successful, the CCCI model could enable coal-dependent economies to shift to clean energy in a socially responsible and financially viable way.