Published
By Myrna M. Velasco
The country’s
electricity demand has been growing faster than the pace of investments on
power capacity additions, according to a report by the Department of Energy.
The report cited that
demand for electricity in 2018 had expanded 5.7-percent to 99,765
gigawatt-hours despite slowdown in economic growth while power supply in terms
of capacity installations grew at slower rate of 4.8-percent.
As of last year, the
energy department logged total installed capacity of 23,815 megawatts (MW) from
a lower base of 21,730MW in 2017. The capacity additions for last year,
according to the DOE, hovered at 933.6MW.
The manifest brisk
demand growth then has been keeping energy officials awake at night because it
won’t take long before increasing electricity needs of the Filipinos could
outstrip available supply that could result in brownouts.
This is the reason
Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi has been re-aligning priorities in his
department, with sharp focus on cornering new power investments.
But with an
“over-litigated” and “over-legislated” power sector, plus the threats of
incentive system overhaul under the Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High
Quality Opportunities (TRABAHO) Bill, the odds are not exactly in the energy
chief’s favor in cornering these much-needed investments – to which many
experts claim as a disaster in a highly-technical and complex sector not
dominated by the real experts, but mostly by lawyers.
In summer months this
year, the biggest power grid of Luzon has already been recurrently tormented
with “yellow” and “red” alert conditions – indicating not just tightness of
supply but the lack of it during peak demand, hence, triggering unwanted
brownouts.
Cusi realizes that his
three-year window is already running tight as he called for a revisit of DOE’s
medium term action plan.
“We must think, serve
and formulate the appropriate policies in accordance to what will help bring
accessible, reliable and affordable energy throughout the entire country,” the
energy chief said.
Under his tenure at the
department, not a single power project of massive scale baseload capacity has
reached “committed capacity” phase yet – and even greater “brownout danger”
lurks following a Supreme Court decision that invalidated at least 90 power
supply agreements of both existing and forthcoming power projects.
Even with that major
roadblock however, Cusi is pragmatic that new power investments will flow
starting this year until the 2022 culmination of the Duterte regime, so it can
satiate the country’s long term energy demand.
“The department will
fast-track the contracting of new generating capacities for 2023-2030,” Cusi
stressed; noting that one development to that has been investment interests
sounded off by Japanese investors in the recent visit of Duterte in that Asian
neighbor.
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