(The Philippine Star) | Updated January 7, 2014 - 12:00am
Our energy security has been managed with so much mediocrity. As in the case of transport infrastructure, nothing has been moving in terms of attracting enough investments in new generating capacity to meet rising demand.
Our economy cannot simply go on expanding at more than 6% each year without supplementing our generating capacity — ideally with technology to bring down power costs rather than cause the power price spikes we are now experiencing.
For so many decades, power costs in our economy served as a major hindrance to industrial investments. We have one of the highest power costs in the world. That is the reason our manufacturing sector hollowed out, pushing up unemployment and widening poverty.
We do not seem to have a strategy to improve our power reserves dramatically and drastically bring down costs. Or, at least, we do not have a properly executed strategy.
Only by bringing down the costs of power can we pave the way for the creation of quality industrial jobs. For as long as our power is ridiculously priced, our manufactures cannot compete. Cheaper imports will flood our domestic market. Jobs will be scarce.
We began to lose our labor-intensive manufacturing enterprises when power costs began to climb and when power supply began to be problematic during the presidency of Corazon Aquino. We never recovered since then. Unemployment has become chronic, relieved only by exporting Filipino workers to the rest of the world.
One watershed policy decision made during those years was to mothball the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. After sinking billions of dollars in borrowed money to build this plant, it has not generated a single watt of power. On top of that, we spent billions more keeping the plant mothballed.
A final policy decision must be reached on this. If we do not want to go nuclear, then we should bring in investments required to transform this facility into a coal-fired plant. If we are still open to using nuclear power — the cheapest and most reliable energy source — then let us conduct the public debate and arrive at a consensus on this.
The longer we allow this matter to dangle, the nearer we will be to a new round of power shortages akin to the one during the Cory Aquino presidency, brought about by absolute lack of foresight and total policy chaos.
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