According to Department of Energy (DOE) chief Sharon Garin, the agency is fast tracking the construction of power generation facilities as only 31 projects out of the new 200 ones that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. committed to switch on by 2028 have been fired up so far.
In his State of the Nation Address in 2025, Marcos said his administration would deploy 200 power facilities, noting that around three million households still did not have electricity. “Brownouts remain frequent and electricity prices remain high. That’s why we are working faster to connect more homes and strengthen the capacity of our power generators,” he said then.
Once those power plants are online, Marcos said they could provide electricity to four million households, or more than 200,000 factories.
However, Garin noted that only 31 power projects have been activated as of end-March. Those facilities are mostly renewable energy facilities, such as solar, hydro, and biomass plants.
She added that the agency had been “creating a more competitive and investor-friendly” power sector. Steps include the liberalization of renewable energy investments, streamlining of permitting processes, as well as issuance of policies backing microgrids, offshore wind development, and transmission.
It has also been conducting green energy auctions to encourage more industry players to build clean power assets not just in Luzon, but also in Visayas and Mindanao.
Garin said the agency had so far awarded 20 gigawatts worth of contracts from the previous waves of green energy auctions.
The government is intensifying efforts to ensure that the country will source half its power generation from renewables by 2040, with new auction rounds eyed to secure 20 GW of additional capacity.
Power has been a perennial problem in the Philippines, where aside from the approximately three million households that still do not have electricity, there are the problems caused by the hot and dry season, when the extreme heat leads to confluence of increased demand for cooling and lowered capacity of hydroelectric and thermal power plants.
Government officials have long known that the solution lies in more power plants, with the matching distribution network, but for some reason, we just can’t seem to keep up. How much longer do Filipinos have to wait until we can have a power infrastructure that we can depend on?*
