Recent rulings by the Supreme Court (SC) and the Court of Appeals (CA) reaffirmed the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC)’s authority as the sole and independent regulator of the country’s electric power industry.
These latest rulings strengthen the ERC’s jurisdiction on significant regulatory issues, including consumer complaints, bill deposit policies and oversight of electricity generation and supply operations, the ERC said in a statement.
The SC, in Colmenares v. ERC (G.R. No. 246422) case dated Oct. 8, 2024 and issued Jan. 27, 2025, affirmed the ERC’s power to require bill deposits from consumers as a legitimate exercise of its rate-fixing function to ensure the economic viability of distribution utilities (DUs).
“This court is not a trier of facts, and ordinarily, it has no competence to resolve factual questions. In choosing to directly raise these issues before this court, petitioners should have ensured that their petition does not raise any factual questions. Instead, they cite the Ombudsman decision’s findings of fact as substitute in claiming that the factual basis for its conclusions was well founded. However, this is improper because the Ombudsman decision is not pending before us. Until its finality, the Ombudsman’s findings cannot be considered as binding before this court. There being questions of fact, petitioners direct resort to this Court is unjustified,” the SC said.
Meanwhile, in early January of 2025, the court, in Hicap v. ERC, et al (G.R. No. 210334) dated Aug. 1, 2023, the SC also upheld the mandate of the ERC pursuant to Republic Act No. 9136 or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA) and the well-established doctrine of upholding the technical expertise of regulatory agencies.
The SC ruled that, although the generation and supply sectors are not public utilities, they remain subject to ERC regulation, emphasizing that “while the generation and supply sectors are not public utilities, this by no means removes them from the ambit of governmental regulation.”