GUINOBATAN, Albay—Crizel Joyz Amano, 22, is back in town after signing up at a review center in Manila in preparation for a chemical engineering exam.

Here in Albay, she must still regularly log in at 6 p.m. for an online review, all while dealing with the constant power interruptions in the province.

“We experience almost-daily brownouts,” she told CoverStory.ph. “Sometimes, the electricity would flicker, and other times there are scheduled power interruptions for 8-12 hours.”

She said it’s unfair that electricity bills are rising but service is poor.

Amano and her household are among some 217,000 member-consumers of Albay Electric Cooperative Inc. (Aleco), the distribution utility (DU) powering all 15 towns and three cities in the province.

After the Sept. 27-28 investment summit in Legazpi City, Albay has secured P84 billion in pledges from private companies here and abroad for a shift to 100% renewable energy. When all of its planned solar and wind farms in its first and third districts are built, it will be able to generate 1,250 megawatts of electricity.

Albay Gov. Edcel Greco “Grex” Lagman sees these pledges as positive for the province’s 2050 targets.

“It’s a very impressive pledge,” he told CoverStory.ph. “It only goes to show that they believe in our advocacy that Albay should be completely renewable by 2050. It’s a great start. As a local government unit, Albay is committed to making sure that an environment conducive to investors will be had.”

In October 2023, Albay was the first to declare a state of climate emergency when the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ) visited the province during the Climate Walk 2023.

PMCJ organized the well-attended 2-day summit in Legazpi City alongside the provincial government of Albay. Among those present were Lloyd Cameron, economic and climate counsellor of the Embassy of the United Kingdom; Marissa Cerezo, director of the Renewable Energy Management Bureau of the Department of Energy; Yang Guoliang, minister counsellor of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China; and Rene Ofreneo, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition.

‘Christmas lights’

Lagman said that in popularizing renewable energy (RE), “we have to involve the communities to make them understand that the perennial problem in electricity—which seems like a Christmas-lights setup—will now be changing for the better.”

The governor was referring to the common description of the electricity supply as “Christmas lights” or flickering on and off.

Aleco spokesperson Anj Galero said the constant power interruptions in Albay are due to various reasons: “overloading of settings in substations, hot spot corrections, cut-off of primary and secondary lines and so on.”

She told CoverStory.ph that “our technical team is focused on eradicating these problems.”

Galero mentioned illegal connections as also contributing to the power interruptions. “That is why the cooperative is doing its best to strengthen its campaign against electricity theft and pilferage,” she said.

Lagman said that once RE is produced in the solar and wind farms planned in the province, Aleco can be “pressured” into buying clean energy.

“We should also pressure Aleco as DU … to buy from RE suppliers, not from dirty energy like coal-power plants,” he told the press on Sept. 28.

Galero denied rumors that the National Electrification Administration (NEA) had pressured DUs not to attend the summit. “As far as Aleco is concerned, there was no express prohibition on attending the summit,” she said.

“Aleco is not against renewable energy usage. We express our full support for it. Also, the cooperative abides by the rules and guidelines governing the establishment of the Renewable Portfolio Standards for on-grid areas which is mandated by law.”

Lagman praised Aleco for attending the summit despite “mention that there was pressure from NEA.”

He added: “In the national level, there’s push and pull. Of course, they want the status quo. They want traditional sources of energy to prevail. But that cannot happen. There is no way to go but RE. There is no way to go but green.”

Signal

Lidy Nacpil, regional coordinator of the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) and convenor of Asia Energy Network, said they view the investment summit in Legazpi City as historic and a critical point in the shift to RE for Albay and the rest of the country.

“We hope that it sets off a signal and becomes a source of inspiration for other local government units, provinces, cities, towns,” Nacpil told CoverStory.ph.

She said that the Philippines will benefit from local governments being empowered to pursue such projects, and that “we don’t have to be bogged down by the slowness of action by the national government.”

Nacpil said it is unfortunate that one of the problematic features of Epira, or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, is that the national government is not allowed to make significant investments in the power sector.

“The government needs to lead the transition from fossils to renewable energy, and if their hands are tied from making investments, then they will not be able to exercise the leadership that is needed,” she said. “In the meantime, while we are addressing these burdens at the national level, we should be pursuing the acceleration by mobilizing the local government. That is why [the summit] is very historic.”

Climate crisis solution

Most of the people of Albay view the shift to RE as a short-term solution to the constant power interruptions. But for the APMDD, a member of the PMCJ, the greatest reason for this shift is “at the heart of the solution to the climate crisis.”

International activists and advocates have called for keeping the world’s average temperature at 1.5 degrees Celsius as a defense line against the extreme and irreversible effects of the climate crisis.

“If we are to keep this goal still possible, what is important is not just to talk about what we must achieve by 2050. What is important is what we need to achieve in the ‘immediate’ and the ‘near’ term,” Nacpil said in a presentation during the first day of the summit.

Albay, like many eastern provinces in the Philippines, usually bears the brunt of typhoons entering the country.

In 2023, some 95,000 persons in Albay alone were affected by Tropical Depression “Amang,” according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).

Amang eventually weakened after passing another Bicol province, Camarines Norte, but it left P12 million in damage in agriculture, affecting more than 1,300 farmers and fishers.

This year, Typhoon “Enteng” (international name: Yagi) affected some 94,000 Albayanos and left close to P2 billion in damage to agriculture and affected over 45,000 farmers and fishers, according to the NDRRMC.

Crizel Amano said her closest encounter with stronger typhoons was in 2020, when Supertyphoon “Rolly” (international name: Goni) ravaged the Bicol region.

In Albay, more than 474,000 residents were affected and in her home village of San Francisco, residents were killed or went missing after lahar triggered by Rolly buried homes.

Nacpil also said the shift to RE must be rapid, equitable, and just, and that the scale and pace of the shift must ensure that net zero emissions are reached by 2050.

She said efforts to reduce emissions must be shared by all countries, and especially by countries with historically high emissions such as the United States, which emitted 509 gigatons out of 2,500 between the years 1850 and 2021, or 20% of total emissions despite it being home to only 4.23% of the world’s population.

This is comparable to the share of China and India (34.6% of the world’s population) of 14.6% of emissions.

Finally, Nacpil said, governments must address potential dislocations and disruptions in people’s lives and ensure that all sectors of society are involved in the shift.

No dislocation

Arnold Onrubia, officer in charge of Albay’s Provincial Planning and Development Office, said the province is making sure that funds are allotted for possible displacements when wind and solar farms are installed.

Said Governor Lagman: “We don’t want to use land from which people will be displaced, so we’re looking at private landholdings. That will be the best option for us at this point.”

He also said people living near potential RE farms will be employed, noting that “the job creation potential is very huge.”

In terms of transparency and accountability, the governor said an ordinance is forthcoming: “We need the support of our board members. We need them to be on board and that will, of course, provide the transparency that the people of Albay deserve. We cannot do this with an executive order. It should be via an ordinance or a local law.”

PMCJ energy officer Edwin Tesaluna said in a presentation at the summit that Albay has the potential capacity to automatically transform to 100%renewables, which, he noted, Albayanos know because of its geothermal plants.

“Unfortunately, because of some regulatory requirements, procedures, policies, etc., Albayanos did not avail [themselves] of clean and renewable energy,” he said. “Instead, the main source of the power of Albay was taken kilometers away in Batangas, at a coal-fired power plant.”

Local governments can

Asked if she and her colleagues see public and private partnerships as the only way to go, Nacpil said local governments must be ready to make public investments.

“If the local government can, and they should be able to raise enough resources, they can actually have their own [RE] projects that can be pacesetters,” she said.

Nacpil said projects intended to service communities, and not to raise money, should be led by the government: “The private sector will not be as interested to do that. Their bottom line will always be, ‘Will we earn?’ That’s the economics of it. And because energy isn’t being given for free, of course, there will be some returns on their investments.”

Moreover, she said, local governments will be facing adversarial power and influence from fossil fuel companies.

“For instance, we have encountered in a number of areas in the Philippines some mayors who are not very cooperative because they have some economic interest in the development of fossil fuel projects in their city,” she said.

Alberto David, a member of the Aleco Resistance Movement International (Armi), said that if RE were really meant to help Albayanos, the government should have made use of local resources such as Tiwi Geothermal Power Plant (TGP) and the Bacon-Manito Geothermal (BacMan), both in Albay.

Armi has been calling for lowering electricity costs and stopping support to electricity from fossil fuels.

“We currently have oversupply from TGP and BacMan,” David told Coverstory.ph. “The ‘profits already taken by the oligarchs and bureaucrats for decades could have already freed more money for solar, wind, hydro and other resources. With Albay and Bicol’s natural RE resources, we should have already been the RE superpower being dreamt of.”

David described the RE investment summit as a mere election move: “As usual, because it is the periodic election zarzuela period, politicians promise heaven, earth, the moon and the stars to get people to vote for these same oligarchs and bureaucrats. Owner-member-consumers will pay these monopolies while being made to clap their hands, smile and laugh in glee even as the plunder and resulting underdevelopment intensify.”