President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. pledged to put an end to widespread power outages as he pushed for sweeping reforms in the country’s energy sector during his fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA), citing the recent blackout in Siquijor as a wake-up call.
Marcos recognized that despite the Philippines’ relentless efforts in pursuing renewable energy developments to address electricity shortage, millions of households remain without access to power facilities.
“To address this, we’re speeding up electrification efforts and boosting the capacity of our energy producers.” President Marcos said.
When the Marcos administration began in 2022, more than five million homes across the country had no electricity, according to the President. He reported that in the last three years, power had reached 2.5 million of those homes.
Over the next three years, he said nearly 200 new power plants are expected to be completed, which can serve four million households, more than 2,000 factories, or nearly 7,000 offices and businesses.
He also directed the Department of Energy (DOE) and National Electrification Administration (NEA) to meet their electrification targets by 2028, particularly in underserved areas like Quezon, Camarines Norte, Palawan, Masbate, Samar, Negros Occidental, and Zamboanga del Sur.
By the end of 2028, Marcos said more than one million additional households will gain electricity access through solar home systems, helping families save on power costs and even sell excess energy to the grid.
The DOE will roll out a net metering program and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) was tasked to speed up the approval process.
To assist low-income consumers, the government will also expand the “lifeline rate” subsidy to include not just 4Ps beneficiaries, but also households on the government’s poverty list whose power consumption remains within the lifeline threshold.
President Marcos highlighted the recent Siquijor blackout as a critical example of what must be avoided. The province declared a state of calamity due to crippling outages that disrupted daily life and seriously affected their tourism sector, businesses, hospital and public services.
“I will not let what happened in Siquijor slide,” Marcos said. “What did we uncover in our investigation? Expired permits, broken generators that were clearly neglected, slow response, and a disorganized system for acquiring fuel and spare parts.”
He ordered the DOE, NEA, and ERC to restore full access to electricity services across the entire Siquijor island before the year ends and to establish permanent solutions to prevent similar incidents in the future.
“This must never happen again. We will investigate the neglect that led to this situation—and similar cases across the country,” he warned. “We will compel power companies to improve their management and order refunds to consumers, if necessary.”
