The Claim: BBM developed the famous Ilocos wind farms
Rating: FALSE
The Facts: You probably saw the advertisement of Bongbong Marcos plucking a windmill like a flower and handing it to Sara Duterte.
Also, Bongbong Marcos’s official website continues to claim that he built wind farms in Ilocos Norte to provide power to Luzon. (https://www.bongbongmarcos.com/about/)
This is false.
So patently false in fact that it has been fact-checked prior (https://www.rappler.com/…/bangui-wind-farm-ilocos…/)
The Bangui Wind Farm, which is the first power-generating windmill farm in Southeast Asia, was developed by NorthWind Power Development Corp (https://manilastandard.net/…/ilocos-norte-s-windmills…).
No less than the World Wildlife Fund has acknowledged the NPDC project, which is funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) for 37 million USD (https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?13509/First-wind-farm-for-Southeast-Asia).
The basis of developing said wind farm was spurred by a 1996 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which tagged certain areas in the Philippines as ideal for wind farming, and the units themselves were supplied by Vestas Wind Systems from Denmark.
Neither has Marcos had a direct hand in the development of the other two wind farms in Ilocos.
The Burgos Wind Farm was developed by the Energy Development Corp. (EDC) (https://web.archive.org/…/edc-starts-construction-of…) and funded by EDC itself, and commissioned by the Department of Energy.
The Caparispisan Wind Farm was developed by Northern Luzon Renewable Energy Corporation (NLREC), and is a joint venture of Ayala’s AC Energy Holdings Incorporated, the Philippines Alliance for Infrastructure (PNAI), and the UPC Philippines Wind Holdco (https://web.archive.org/…/article/view/381420448725/).
Marcos has had no direct involvement in the projects other than being in office at the time of the farms’ development and declaring support for the projects.
Correlation is not causation.
Why we fact-checked this: Despite being fact-checked prior, the false information continues to be paraded around in no less than Marcos’s official website. Therefore, it is important to similarly remind people that the information remains false.
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