The Philippine public continues to champion renewable energy as a parable to the rest of the world, as representatives from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines presented their latest renewable energy project, Financing and Integrating Renewable Energy in Butuan City (FInRE-BXU), at the Asia Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) 2019, held at the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on the 17^th to the 21^st of June, 2019.

With the presentation entitled “Integrating Renewable Energy through Participative Local Energy Planning” under the session: “New Energy Solutions: Multi-Benefit Opportunities for Cities,” Atty. Angela Consuelo Ibay, WWF-Philippines Climate and Energy Head, highlighted the FInRE-BXU project’s use of a decentralized multi-stakeholder local energy planning process to assist in determining the direction of development in Butuan City, inviting members of both the local and national government, the academe, and civil society to participate in capacity-building workshops and planning seminars, with a view of harnessing and supporting indigenous renewable energy projects. A similar process was used to push renewable energy in Palawan, the country’s largest off-grid island. Butuan City will be the first attempt at utilizing a comparable process for a city that is on the grid.