The pressing needs of Filipinos

Building on the topic of my article last September 26, 2024 (“Push for renewable energy should be balanced with pressing needs of people”), I now intend to expound on what are the pressing needs of Filipinos. Typhoon Kristine and its predecessors have made it very apparent that most Filipinos need:

● Climate-proof infrastructure that secures lives and minimizes economic loss. If anything, the havoc of recent typhoons has made us rethink the efficacy and efficiency of flood control government projects. For three consecutive years, the Philippines ranks first globally in disaster risk in the World Risk Index Report;
● Secure and consistent sources of clean water. According to Water.org, 52 percent of Filipinos lack access to safe water, and 37 percent lack access to a safe toilet. This sad reality is more pronounced when people gather in evacuation centers and ask for donations of potable water; and
● Social safety nets like healthcare. Unsanitary conditions and the spread of disease brought about by floods can impose added costs on impoverished families who have unequal access to healthcare to begin with.

The aforementioned are just a few of the pressing needs of Filipinos. Year in and year out, we hear of larger chronic institutional problems that, if resolved, can help address other intertwined problems.

One such institutional problem is the state of our education. Sad to say that our best Filipino students are comparable only to the average student in Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and Vietnam, and the worst in Singapore, according to the Second Congressional Commission on Education or Edcom II. Resolving the education crisis can directly affect the future livelihoods of our youth and whether or not they have more capability to be more risk-averse to climate-related events. Cumulatively, education can also dictate the quality of an economy’s workforce and a nation’s citizens. I’m very optimistic that the new Education Secretary Sonny Angara is more than capable of improving the state of our education.

Speaking of climate change and shared economic prosperity, another pressing need is reliable and affordable access to energy, coupled with a conscious effort to decarbonize the power grid. These three goals — reliability, affordability, and decarbonization — albeit competing in prioritization, must be balanced and fixed with respect to our experience here in our own country.

While I have already said that I am in favor of renewable energy (RE), the Philippines shouldn’t rush too quickly into it, considering its high cost in conjunction with the whole energy system that needs to run non-stop 24/7 on demand. There is a price to pay for transitioning to low-carbon generation technologies, and the money in our wallets is already stretched enough as it is in doing what we can in that regard while also addressing our other pressing needs.

Moreover, the capacity addition of RE alone might be unable to keep pace with the projected annual growth in electricity demand. RE sources like solar and wind are significantly less energy dense and generate smaller amounts of electricity compared to more traditional sources such as coal; suffice to say that solar and wind facilities only generate electricity when their respective sources are available and sufficient. Otherwise, no power from them.

For context, today, the Philippines is among the lowest in total electricity generation per person at 1,008/kWh. Compare that to the electricity generation of upper middle-income countries which average at 5,222/kWh4. The Philippines really does need more electricity and a reliable supply, while having an energy transition that it can accommodate at its own pace.

We cannot afford to dilly-dally on the concerns of more developed countries that contribute more to global emissions and have the capacity to immediately offload their fossil fuel-fired power plants. We do not share the luxury of energy subsidies nor do we have a fleet of nuclear generation facilities or excess power. Moreover, we do not have the ability to import power from neighboring countries, unlike Europe or North America.

In our case, as electricity demand continues to grow, it will be a challenge for reliable supply to catch up, more so if we subtract high output plants like coal prematurely. Recall that the Philippines contributes only about half of 1 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Let’s not put all our eggs in the decarbonization basket as we need to address the other pressing needs of Filipinos.

I reiterate that there is a need to balance both RE and non-RE energy sources to keep down electricity prices, support businesses and the economy, and address more of the Filipinos’ pressing needs. The Department of Energy itself said that expanding electricity access to 16-24 hours a day for low-income Filipino families would increase their average annual household income by 56.3 percent5.

While we continue to build RE now at a pace we can handle, we need to accept the reality that we still need fossil fuel plants to keep the power grid stable amidst the influx of more generation-fluctuating RE. There are over 8,000 megawatts of committed fossil fuel power projects, as stated in the Philippine Energy Plan 2023-20506. These additions will be critical to our energy security, anchoring an energy plan that is balanced, adaptable, and flexible to our Philippine context.