The government, with the help of international financial organizations, will facilitate the upgrade and modernization of the country’s power transmission and distribution lines to support an efficient transition to cleaner energy.
Secretary Raphael Lotilla of the Department of Energy (DOE) said during an event hosted by the World Bank (WB) yesterday the government also aims to resolve and address transmission congestion either by adding lines or by avoiding subsidies that cause the buildup of excess capacity.
“…Once the government has fiscal space, it will revisit and re-evaluate financing investment in transmission… Financing investment will be separate from the regulatory structure of transmission tariffs… Investment in transmission expansion offers enormous potential benefits for efficiency by increasing access to low-cost generation, improving reliability, and mitigating counterbalancing market power,” Lotilla said.
Lotilla did not elaborate but said the DOE wants to partner with the WB and the Asian Development Bank in achieving it.
The DOE said the government sees a “synergy” in the build-up of infrastructure in other sectors with that in the energy industry and that this presents “opportunities” for building new transmission lines, “along with the rights-of-way” that have been identified for new build-operate-transfer and public-private partnership projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways.
“…We can lower actually the infrastructure costs by building up in parallel the transmission lines as well as the tollways that are going to be built. We also look forward to the upgrading completion with adequate funding from our development partners of the backbone in the major islands. I’m not only talking about the completion of the power infrastructure in Palawan and Mindoro but in islands like Masbate, Catanduanes, Siquijor, Guimaras, Basilan, Jolo and Tawi-Tawi,” Lotilla said.
The DOE said the islands currently do not have a complete power backbone which is needed to achieve full electrification.
