Newly-installed Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras has laid down “grand policy agendas” that he wants accomplished at the Department of Energy (DoE), but industry players are pressing for more specific and feasible directions that the new administration will be taking, especially on the solutions to the sinister hit of power supply shortfalls.

The energy chief, through a press statement from the department, outlined his eight-point platform and policy agenda, but less certain is how he will truly implement much-needed solutions, especially on his statement that “there will be sufficient power supply in the whole nation.”

Industry questions are also flooding as to what the new leadership really meant with “level playing field,” for unless that is concretized, investments will not flow as expected for new power projects to meet the country’s future energy demand. In fact, the policies he spelled out are mostly extensions of what the Arroyo administration has done for the sector.

“The government will ensure a level playing field for investors in the energy sector to increase investments and boost power production, put a stop to cronyism in the power sector and rationalize the permits and clearances processes to make the industry attractive, fair, and competitive,”  Almendras stressed. In the power industry, he proposed establishment of a national grid which will link Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, but this is not really the short-term need of the sector to avert the threatening crisis.

In the short term, the energy chief said he will “support moves to mitigate the effects of the power crisis;” and one of the solutions he proposed is lease of power barges – the very expensive solution previously thought out by his predecessors.

The others he will be pushing for would be: Contracting additional generating capacity through cooperatives and private utilities (which definitely is beyond government’s discretion); allowing the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines to use ancillary services such as the contracting of back-up generating capacity; and promoting demand-side management.