IT seems that every administration from Marcos down to Arroyo gave us the impression that the country was well on the way to achieving complete electrification, that is, that it was only a matter of time before every household could enjoy electric power with the flick of a switch.
Well, it’s time for a reality check, courtesy of the Department of Energy (DOE).
As of June 30 this year, the DOE said, electrification levels stand at 83 percent or around 14.4 million households of the 17.4 million households in the country.
Electrification levels in the franchise areas of the 119 electric cooperatives in the country stand at 75 percent, or 9,057,448 connections out of the 12,157,000 potential connections for the first semester of 2011.
That’s why the department is now preparing the road map to achieve 90-percent household electrification by 2017. The road map is envisioned in the Energy Reform Agenda that aims to provide energy access to more Filipinos.
The DOE said the road map will consist of strategies to address the policy, regulatory and institutional barriers to the country’s rural and missionary electrification program.
The goal is to fast-track the implementation of household-electrification activities by all proponents, including the distribution utilities, electric cooperatives, the National Power Corp.-Small Power Utilities Group, qualified third parties, and other service providers that employ decentralized options such as solar home systems and mini-grid, to name just two.
The government seeks to energize around 370,900 new household connections every year until 2017 to reach the 90-percent target.
The target, according to the DOE, will be achieved by using decentralized options such as solar home systems. That means near-total electrification of the country will be achieved only after seven years, or after the Aquino administration shall have entered the history books.
In other words, don’t expect “total electrification” to be counted among the accomplishments of President Aquino when he steps down in 2016 and hands over the reins of power to his elected successor.
According to 2009 figures of the International Energy Agency (IEA), worldwide, 1.456 billion people did not have access to electricity, of which 83 percent live in rural areas.
Worldwide, electrification progresses only slowly, because of the huge investment in generation and network infrastructures. The IEA estimates that—if current trends do not change—the number of people without electricity will fall to 1.2 billion by the year 2030.
It’s worthwhile to take a look at the experience of other countries to see exactly where we stand.
The electrification of households in the US began around 1905 in major cities and increased rapidly until about 1930, when 70 percent of households were electrified. Many of the remaining mostly rural households were electrified before 1950.
China hopes to achieve full rural electrification by 2015, while Brazil had targeted 98.9 percent of all rural households to have access to electricity in 2009, as compared to only 74.9 percent in 1981.
In contrast, in India, some 400 million Indians out of 1.2 billion have no access to electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa only 12 percent of the rural population enjoy access to electricity.
What this tells us is that the extent and efficiency of electrical generation in a given country is directly related to its level of technological progress.
The fact is that, without electrification, there can be no modern industry. The electrification of both urban and rural areas inexorably results in high productivity and economic growth.
With the DOE’s projections, electrification in the country will proceed at an excruciatingly slow pace, with at least 10 percent of the remaining unelectrified areas unlikely to emerge from the Dark Ages beyond 2017.
Or are the people in these areas the lucky ones, as they do not have to pay the highest power rates in all of Asia, surpassing even that of technologically advanced Japan?
