Last Friday, Oct. 10, I attended the press conference of the Department of Energy (DoE) with Secretary Sharon S. Garin and several DoE undersecretaries speaking. Many topics were covered — from the planned expansion of waste-to-energy, the expansion of use of electric vehicles, power restoration in storm-ravaged Masbate, and the damage to the power supply from the 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Cebu province. And as the press conference was ongoing, another earthquake, this one with a magnitude of 7.4, hit the Davao region. The power situation was monitored there in real time.
I saw the efforts and hard work of the people in the DoE in trying to restore power as soon as possible by coordinating with the concerned institutions, both public and private, like the generation companies, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), the distribution utilities and electric cooperatives, and then informing the public of their actions. Thank you, DoE, for your service.
On Oct. 6 the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) released the September composite prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) for the October billing. It was only P3.04/kilowatt hour (kWh), and in Luzon in particular, it was only P2.57/kWh. But low WESM prices do not mean low electricity prices because there is an adjustment for the price differential between the feed-in tariff-eligible renewable energy (RE) at a high price vs the low WESM prices. The lower the WESM prices, the higher the feed-in tariff or FIT allowance will be in our monthly electricity bill.
I notice and applaud the round-the-clock updates from the NGCP, made during the prolonged monsoon rains (habagat) and the tropical storms last July, the recent typhoons in southern Luzon, then the earthquakes in Cebu and Davao. Because of these updates, I knew which sub-stations were not available, which ones were restored, which provinces and electric cooperatives had power, and so on.
Yesterday at 4 a.m., the NGCP released an update after another earthquake, this time with a magnitude of 6.0, hit Cebu again at 1 a.m. The Daanbantayan transmission line was affected but restored by 2 a.m. Thank you, NGCP, for the regular updates and good public information.
Also last week, Ember (UK) — an RE lobbyist — released a report that RE had overtaken coal in world power generation in the first half of 2025. Many international media outlets reported that wind and solar have displaced coal as the main source of power generation in the world.
This is not true.
Until 2024, global coal generation was 10,613 terawatt-hours (TWh) vs wind and solar generation which produced 4,623 TWh. As a share of total generation last year, coal had 34% while wind and solar had only 15% (see Table 1).
There is no way that wind and solar can overtake coal. At the ASMODIUM 2025 forum at De La Salle University Manila last Saturday, Oct. 11, Rolando “Don” Paulino, Chief Engineering and Projects Officer of Aboitiz Power, correctly observed that “Renewables would continue to be intermittent — if there is no wind or sun, you will not have electricity. There needs to be a proper energy mix. There needs to be funding now on power plants, a range of fossil-based, gas, and renewables.”
I bumped into my former boss from back when I was working at the House of Representatives in the 1990s, former congressman and former finance secretary Gary Teves. I asked him about the role of coal in our energy security, he said that, “In terms of preventing power intermittency and lowering overall cost, coal would still be preferred, especially if the country is trying to grow industries like manufacturing which require large amounts of affordable and consistent power… Instead of ambitious renewable energy targets, the government must aim to increase overall power generation regardless of where power will come from.”
Yesterday I attended the Meralco press conference announcing the October 2025 billing. After a P0.185/kWh decline last September, there will be an increase of P0.233/kWh for October. The speakers were Meralco spokesperson and Head of Corporate Communications Joe Zaldarriaga, and Head of Utility Economics Larry Fernandez.
Mr. Fernandez explained that the increase was mainly due to a higher generation charge. This in turn was affected by the peso’s depreciation. About 59% of Meralco’s non-WESM supply is dollar denominated. For the First Gas plants, the share is 99% (even supposedly indigenous Malampaya gas is 100% priced in dollars). For all other power supply agreements, the dollar share is 48%.
In Table 2, I compared the rates of the various charges in our monthly electricity bill. The generation charge this year is higher, mainly for the reasons mentioned above. But there are price rollbacks like the rate refund/reset.
Messrs. Zaldarriaga and Fernandez explained the infrastructure reserves and redundancies that Meralco has prepared to make their facilities and distribution lines strong and resilient. Nice.
Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. Research Consultancy Services, and Minimal Government Thinkers. He is an international fellow of the Tholos Foundation.