[OPINION] The energy crisis we must not waste

Every time conflict breaks out in the Middle East, it finds its way into Filipino homes. Climate Change Commission Executive Director Robert Borje, writing in the Daily Tribune last April 12, put it plainly: “Not through headlines but through higher electricity bills, transport costs and more expensive food. We do not see the conflict but we feel it. We pay for instability we do not control.”

He is right. The Philippines imports 95-98% of its oil from the Middle East, and that dependence has produced a cascading emergency: diesel prices exceeding P130 per liter, hundreds of filling stations forced to close, airlines suspending routes, and tens of thousands of overseas Filipino workers stranded. We have been here before. And that is precisely the problem.

Borje captured the danger of the moment with unusual candor for a sitting Cabinet secretary: “Crises do not always push us forward. Sometimes, they pull us back. In moments like this, the instinct is to secure supply quickly and lean on the familiar — imported fuel, existing coal, short-term fixes that keep everything running. That is understandable. But it is also how dependence deepens.” That cannot be the story this time.

The cost of our transportation paralysis

What this crisis reveals is not just oil dependence, but a troubling pattern of governance. The Philippines continues to absorb external shocks in largely the same way: waiting for disruption, responding with partial measures, and framing the outcome as unforeseen. The escape route has been visible for years. We chose not to take it.

The Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program has electrified only 5% of the country’s 220,000 jeepneys, despite years of implementation and explicit policy mandates. Five percent. That is the measure of our institutional resolve. Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Sharon Garin herself told the Senate that China is “less affected” by the current disruption because its fleet is already electric. China made a choice. We deferred ours, and now we are paying for it in diesel lines and grounded planes.

The reasons for this failure are self-inflicted. A modern jeepney costs approximately P2.8 million per unit, making it 1,766% more expensive than a traditional jeepney, while the government subsidy covers no more than 5.7% of that cost. We designed a modernization program for the poor and priced out the poor. The answer is not to abandon it but to fix it urgently: zero-interest financing for e-fleets, charging infrastructure, route-based subsidies, and massively scaled e-tricycle deployment. 

Meanwhile, the government procures almost half a million new vehicles with internal combustion engines every year. Replacing these with electric vehicles would dramatically reduce our need to import oil. Government fleet electrification is the single most immediately actionable step available to this administration. Every P130-per-liter diesel price is a reminder of what continued delay actually costs.

We must also electrify private transportation. We are so far behind our neighbors on this matter.

The coal moratorium must not be lifted

Secretary Arsenio Balisacan argued that “it doesn’t seem to me a bad idea at all to also think about delaying a bit our transition,” citing how Japan, Germany, and Italy are revisiting their renewable energy timelines. This framing is misleading. Those countries are managing overcorrections shaped by their own specific contexts. Importing their hesitations wholesale is not prudent planning.

The Philippines relies on imports for 70% of its coal supply, 97% of which comes from Indonesia. Coal is not a pathway to energy security. It is a detour through a different import dependency. If oil from the Middle East makes us vulnerable, coal from Indonesia exposes us to a different set of geopolitical pressures, as we learned when Indonesia briefly banned coal exports in 2022.

Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, president of Caritas Philippines, stated this plainly in the organization’s April 14 press release: “Coal is not a neutral energy source. It pollutes our air, devastates ecosystems, and accelerates the climate crisis. In Atimonan, Quezon, residents face constant threats to their livelihoods; in Zambales, families suffer from health risks and economic displacement. These are not distant projections; they are the daily lived experiences of our people.”

His warning about temporary measures must be heard in every Senate hearing room and Cabinet meeting: “We are deeply concerned that measures framed as ‘short-term responses’ will lock the country into a cycle of dependence on harmful energy. Energy policy must not sacrifice the poor and the planet for the illusion of immediate relief.”

Coal still generated 62.5% of Philippine power in 2024. The bottleneck is not baseload supply. It is execution: transmission development has become a major constraint, delays in grid expansion are already stranding new renewable assets, and weak implementation of electricity-market reforms has kept competition incomplete. We do not need more coal. We need a government that can build the grid to carry the renewables we have already committed to. An energy transition that pauses every time there is a crisis is not a transition. It is a performance.

The Ahunan problem: Green label, unjust reality

A just transition demands honesty even about projects that carry the renewable energy label. The Ahunan pumped-storage hydropower project in Pakil, Laguna is a case in point. The proposed 1,400-MW facility by Enrique Razon’s Prime Metro Power Holdings Corp. would cover over 299 hectares across four barangays on the east bank of Laguna de Bay. Its proponents frame it as clean energy. 

The communities of Pakil tell a different story. Protesters have cited the eviction of residents from Pinagkampohan, a village cleared for construction, and the barring of farmers and fisherfolk from their lands and fishing grounds around Laguna Lake. 

The facility’s environmental impacts include killing fish, spreading invasive species, damaging wetland ecosystems, and obstructing the movement of aquatic species. As local farmer Ka Jun Asin said: “Itong lugar na ito, sa ilang taon pa siguro, ay hindi na mapapakinabangan pa ng mga magsasaka at ng susunod na mga henerasyon.” (In just a few more years maybe, farmers and the next generation can no longer benefit from this place.)

A renewable energy label does not automatically confer justice. Projects that displace communities, destroy watersheds, and proceed without genuine free, prior, and informed consent are not part of a just transition, regardless of what they are called. 

The Ahunan project, as currently constituted, violates the very principles a credible energy transition must be built on. The communities of Pakil deserve the same protection that any just transition framework promises to the poor. Their resistance is not an obstacle to the energy transition. It is a reminder of what that transition is supposed to be for.

The choice before us

Secretary Borje ended his article with a challenge: “We can keep paying for a system we do not control or begin shaping one that works better for us. That choice is not made once. It is made in the habits we keep and the policies we advance long after the lights come back on.”

He is right. And the choices being made right now, on coal, on electrification, on transport modernization, on the rights of communities like Pakil, are exactly those policies. They will determine whether this crisis becomes the turning point we needed, or merely another entry in a long ledger of missed opportunities.

The Middle East will stabilize. Oil will flow again. Prices will ease. And when they do, the instinct will be to return to normal. We must refuse that instinct. Because what we have been calling normal is exactly what made us this vulnerable. The crisis is real. The opportunity it opens is also real. Whether we take it is a choice we must make right now. – Rappler.com