Despite the Aquino administration’s aspiration to give Filipino consumers more cost-competitive electricity rates, the short-term policy agenda laid down by the Department of Energy (DoE) actually portends solutions that will be more relatively expensive in consumers’ pockets.

The Energy Reform Agenda presented to media by Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras talked about plans of re-powering mothballed oil-fired as well as the transfer of power barges from Visayas to augment supply in Mindanao.

In the chain of solutions, it must be noted that running oil-based plants can be considered among the most expensive options since cost recovery for fuel alone may already hover at P8 to P9 per kilowatt hour (kWh), without subsidies and factoring in fuel price volatilities.

The power facilities proposed for re-powering include the Bauang diesel power plant; Subic diesel power plant and the Duracom and Navotas gas turbine facilities. What has not been emphasized though is the entity will repower the facilities and how their capacity be sold to bilateral off-takers or via the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.

The DoE plan also propounded the transfer of Power Barges 101, 102 and 103 to Mindanao once the committed power plants in the Visayas would commence full commercial operation next year.

Almendras qualified though that the ERA “is still a work-in-progress” and that stakeholder inputs are being collated before crafting the final form of the energy policy agenda. “Again, I have to repeat this is a work in progress. We want to ask people, we are inviting stakeholders, companies, private individuals to comment on these. The idea is to work together to come up with something that is better than what we have come up with,” the energy chief stressed.

But at least to this government’s credit, industry players noted that having such solutions will be “less expensive than not having power.”

The ERA which hinges on the theme “Energy Access for More” also spelled out policy directions for other sectors, including both the upstream and downstream segments of the oil and gas industry; resource utilization, energy conservation and demand-side management and competition frameworks, among others.

The energy agenda also delves with addressing pricing issues, primarily on the aspect discouraging investments, and what the DoE plans to accomplish through better coordination with the Energy Regulatory Commission.

Nevertheless, the plan is still bereft of specific policy actions on how to improve the business environment so investors will be enticed to shell out fresh capital for power projects.

In the roster of short-term solutions detailed out for the power industry also include reduction in the forced outage rate of the generating units; and enforce strict compliance of power plants with their annual preventive maintenance program.

There have also been proposals to create an Independent Reliability Council, tap embedded generators to augment supply, update the Power Supply Contingency Plan, develop monitoring and disclosures on status of generating facilities; develop policy framework for distributed generation projects, initiate the upgrading and rehabilitation of National Power Corporation (NPC) plants as well as implementing heat rate improvements in power plants.