“Having a reliable energy source is a foundation of progress. The lack of access to energy has always been a major drawback to economic and social development. Without energy, the government cannot deliver the most basic of its services – clean water, health, shelter, and education.” – President Benigno S. Aquino III
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The Philippines continues to depend significantly on fossil fuels, In 2023, fossil fuels accounted for 78% of electricity generation. However, the government intends to mitigate this dependence by utilizing the country’s abundant renewable energy resources to lessen its dependence on imported fossil fuels.
As of 2023, renewable energy sources constituted roughly 22% of the total installed electricity generation capacity in the country. The government has established ambitious objectives to enhance the proportion of renewables within the energy mix.
The objective is to attain 50% of the total installed power capacity from renewable sources by 2030, equating to approximately 15.3 gigawatts (GW). This objective is in line with the country’s obligations under the Paris Agreement to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 75% by 2030.
The country has significant potential for various renewable energy sources, including hydropower, geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass. In fact, the Philippines ranks third globally in installed geothermal capacity, following the United States and Indonesia.
Last year, Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano emphasized the need for a clean-energy transition that does not burden Filipino households. “With more than half of our energy requirements being imported, we are clearly vulnerable to geopolitical conflicts,” he said.
Cayetano also called for greater reliance on domestic energy resources to strengthen the country’s energy independence. “Let’s make sure our energy strategy moves in the right direction, one that strengthens our security and ensures every Filipino has access to reliable and affordable power,” he pointed out.
By 2030, global energy consumption is projected to be 55 per cent higher than it is today due to population growth, continued urbanization, and economic expansion, according to Janet Sawin of the Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute.
“Today, new renewable resources provide only a small share of global energy production,” she wrote. “Yet the advantages of – and urgent need for – shifting away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy and toward greater reliance on renewables are numerous and enormous.
“Our fossil fuel based energy system represents one of the central vulnerabilities of modern civilization, and the environmental, health and security costs associated with our current energy system are immense,” she further wrote.
Sawin believed global production of oil, the world’s dominant energy source, is expected to peak in the next 10 to 20 years. “But of greater concern to many is not when or if economically recoverable fossil fuel reserves will be depleted, but the fact that the world cannot afford to use all the conventional energy resources that remain,” she surmised.
According to Sawin, renewable energy offers tremendous potential and, combined with improvements in energy efficiency, could fuel the economy of the future. “Renewable energy can generate electricity, can heat and cool space, can do mechanical work such as water pumping, and can produce fuels – in other words, everything that conventional energy does.”
Sawin continued several other advantages of renewable energy. “Renewable resources are generally domestic, pose no fuel or transport hazards, and are far less vulnerable to terrorist attack than conventional energy sources,” she penned.
“They can be installed rapidly and in dispersed applications – getting power quickly to areas where it is urgently needed, delaying investment in expensive new electric plants or power lines, and reducing investment risk. All renewables except biomass energy avoid fuel costs and the risks associated with future fuel price fluctuations,” she wrote.
It’s more feasible to use renewable energy than conventional energy sources. “In developing countries, renewables can provide power more cheaply and quickly than the extension of transmission lines and construction of new plants, and can aid in economic development, while avoiding the need to spend precious export earnings on imported fuels,” Sawin said.
Renewable energy is sourced from natural resources that are perpetually replenished, in contrast to fossil fuels, which are limited in supply and release greenhouse gases upon combustion. They are obtained from natural sources that are replenished more quickly than they are utilized, including sunlight, wind, water, geothermal energy, and biomass.
Aside from geothermal energy, another popular source of energy is hydropower. Mindanao, the country’s second largest island, gets more than half of its power needs from hydropower, coming from Agus and Pulangi Rivers.
Most of the hydropower plants in the country are in the form of a dam that backs up the water and raises the level. Smaller hydropower plants, however, do not necessarily require dams. They use a series of pipes with turbines inside which are turned by the current.
“Hydropower is the cheapest way to generate electricity today,” the National Geographic claims. “That’s because once a dam has been built and the equipment installed, the energy source—flowing water—is free. It’s a clean fuel source that is renewable yearly by snow and rainfall.”
American inventor Thomas Alva Edison once said: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait till oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Filipinos appear to be following Edison’s advice. In fact, the utilization of solar energy is on the rise in the country, whether to decrease household electricity usage or to minimize operational expenses for enterprises.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), solar energy is the radiant energy emitted by the sun, which can be transformed into electricity or heat through technologies such as photovoltaics and solar thermal systems. It stands as the cleanest and most plentiful renewable energy source accessible.
The southern region of the Philippine Sea may serve as an excellent site for harnessing renewable energy, as indicated by a research expedition conducted by the Marine Science Institute of the University of the Philippines Diliman.
“The strong surface-to-deep temperature contrast observed in the southern Philippine Sea meets the thermal requirements for OTEC, indicating high potential for continuous baseload renewable energy, with additional applications for desalination, and seawater cooling,” explained Dr. Charina Lyn Amedo-Repollo, who leads the Physical Oceanography and Observation Laboratory.
OTEC, which refers to Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, is a technology that harnesses this temperature difference between warm surface waters and colder waters at depth. To operate efficiently, OTEC systems typically require a temperature contrast of at least 20°C, which in many parts of the world means drawing cold water from depths of 800 to 1,000 meters or deeper.
The southern Philippine Sea is an open-ocean environment exposed to strong solar heating and shaped by large-scale ocean circulation. These conditions create the warmest and most consistent upper-ocean temperatures among the surveyed seas, and its water temperatures drop rapidly with depth.
Meanwhile, Cayetano warned that delaying energy policies or favoring imported fuel could undermine both cost-effectiveness and supply security. “Increased reliance on imported sources of fuel threatens the country’s energy security and energy sovereignty because these are greatly susceptible to a volatile market,” he said.
“We have to transition to cleaner energy without making ordinary Filipinos pay more and at the same time build local energy sources that make our country stronger and more resilient,” he added.
