The answer to our woes

The recent weeks’ faltering energy supply has driven no less than President Marcos to plead to everyone to take part in power-saving measures.

He did so because it manifests where the country is most vulnerable in its drive to become part of the top 14 biggest economies by 2050 as announced recently by his Finance Secretary Ralph Recto. 

That the Philippines continues to keep its head above water as the global economy slows, with even the United States battling inflation in an election year and a troubled China continuously fending off challenges from rival economies, should be maintained if not surpassed, but it hangs by  a thread if the energy supply would remain a concern for investors.

The very thin power supply is a real cause for concern. Despite the earlier assurances from the Department of Energy (DOE) at the start of the dry season at the end of March that there is no power crisis in the country, different shades of alerts in the Luzon and Visayas grids were being reported after many aging power plants went offline or are being operated on reduced capacities.

The country’s transition backbone, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), could no longer keep up that it had placed power grids in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao under red or yellow alerts about three weeks ago.

It was the first time it happened this year. The last time Mindanao was placed under red or yellow alert was in 2010 and 2012 when there were not enough reserves to meet the rising demand.

A red alert means rotating brownouts can be expected as the power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement while a yellow alert means rotating brownouts are possible as the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement, the NGCP explained.

With these forced outages, the President called on the public and all government agencies to help conserve energy and minimize power consumption.

An appeal to electricity end users to conserve energy in order to preserve the integrity of the country’s power system and manage electricity consumption was similarly made by DOE assistant secretary Mario Marasigan to avoid rotational brownouts or widespread outages.

Majority of the power plants that went offline were hydropower plants.

Low water levels caused by the dry spell was blamed for their poor capacity, and it speaks of the source’s instability during weather changes. The nascent renewable energy could not yet deliver to make up for the shortage.

While the DOE had said power plants with a total capacity of 300 megawatts, mostly RE projects in Luzon, would go online in time for this year’s summer months (with a total of 20 MW capacity from several hydropower projects, an additional 29-MW geothermal project and solar power generators that can reportedly produce 104 MW), the agency is still looking at tapping a coal-fired power plant in Bataan to generate 150 MW for backup during this period.

 While coal is scoffed at globally and is largely blamed for global warming, the Philippine experience reflects the reality of the times that even leading global financial institution JPMorgan had acknowledged that the world needs a reality check on its move from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Even Aboitiz Power Corp., which is one of the more aggressive companies pushing for RE, had admitted the need for land, financial resource availability, a skilled workforce, expanded power lines, and baseload capacities to support the more variable RE into the country’s power mix.

That, however, would not happen today. Aboitiz Power president and CEO Emmanuel Rubio has batted for liquified natural gas or LNG as a transition fuel and the option today for baseload power.

It is for this reason that Aboitiz had joined San Miguel Global Power Holdings Corp. and Manny V. Pangilinan’s Meralco Power Gen Corp. in a $3.3-billion major energy project for what is to become the Philippines’ first integrated LNG facility in Batangas.

Rubio was quoted by the media as saying that “it will take us into lesser emissions and lesser carbon intensity in the next 20 years until, of course, new technologies become available that can replace LNG. That would probably be nuclear for baseload.”

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for Malampaya to produce more natural gas after it was bought from Dennis Uy by ports and casino tycoon Enrique Razon Jr. two years ago.

Razon is also counting on LNG as a transition fuel, explaining: “We believe that gas is an important transition fuel in the near-term, reducing the need for baseload fossil fuels like coal. Hence, we intend to accelerate investments on the Malampaya gas field to improve the output of existing wells and, if possible, develop new wells in the area once the license extension is secured from the government.”

The time to deliver, however, is now. The Filipino people’s quality of life and the state of the economy are being threatened, with the anticipated slowdown in power delivery that was exacerbated by the lack of newly built power plants during the Duterte administration.

 The interest of the nation should be placed above anything else. It would require more than switching the lights off. We need to create the energy to power it with the technology and fuel that is available.

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