Improving the country’s power supply has been on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s list of priorities since his first State of the Nation Address.
But in January alone the islands in the Visayas experienced power outages, resulting in economic losses worth billions of pesos. Iloilo, for one, lost about P3 billion in revenues after a four-day blackout.
This year, only part of that promise was accomplished with the completion of the two projects connecting major power grids in the nation’s three main island groups.
Marcos has also vowed to exhaust and explore all other energy options – both in conventional and renewable energy sectors – to accomplish this goal.
However, a staggering number of energy projects are still concentrated in Luzon, specifically renewable energy projects that the Marcos administration is targeting to make up 35% of the country’s energy supply by 2030.
Laws that will allow the Philippines to explore its gas reserves and attract investors for both midstream and downstream gas industries have stalled in the Senate since May 2023.
As the Marcos administration scrambles to secure new sources of power supply in the country, take a closer look at Marcos’ other promises in managing the country’s natural resources:
– with reports from Kiara Gorrospe
