Within her stint as chief regulator of the restructured energy sector, Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta guaranteed that she will uphold “transparent and accountable” regulation in the industry, especially on the facet of rate-setting that has direct impact on consumers.
What has been missing in the commitment of the ERC Chair that industry stakeholders would prefer to know is, how the ERC under her watch will enforce "fairness" and "even-handed" regulation amid recriminations of partisanship thrown her way.
Dimalanta opined “if we truly want to empower our consumers, we need to give access to information that will allow them to make the right decisions. Engage them in an exercise to promote energy literacy.”
The ERC chief vowed to promote "energy democracy" but if truth be told, that remains an "esoteric concept" or more of a "drunkard’s search principle" even to the consumer-advocacy groups that have been making noise from time to time whether in questioning or supporting some of the decisions rendered by the ERC.
Dimalanta said the ERC “must ensure that regulated firms, including those that remain natural monopolies, follow the law because their systems and wires serve as the ‘playing field’ where suppliers and customers make their economic decisions.”
She qualified that “if there is no level playing field, if players are not held accountable, there can be no genuine exercise of the right to choose. In other words, we need to create and then protect this enabling environment for us to achieve energy democracy”
For more than 20 years already, the deregulated power industry had been played on by "regulatory capture" tendencies of powerful corporations that no genuine reform actually happened to truly benefit consumers.
Citing the stance of the Climate Justice Alliance, the ERC fleshed out energy democracy as “a shift away from the corporate, centralized fossil fuel economy and toward one governed by local communities that is based on the principle of no environmental harm, supports local economies, and improves the health and well-being of all peoples.”
Dimalanta considers the 30-year extension of the lifeline rate subsidy under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) as one sphere where "energy democracy" can be attained. But to many industry stakeholders, that is an initiative driving some Filipino consumers deeper into the quagmire of financial subsidy addiction that if it cannot be cured or fixed sooner, it will just end up as a never-ending cycle of dependency even in the decades to come.
As noted by Dimalanta, the mandate of Republic Act 11552 or the law extending and enhancing the implementation of the lifeline rate subsidy will be for those “in the marginalized sector who consume electricity will continue to receive government subsidies in their electricity bills for another 30 years after the first 20 years in the original RA is up.”
She expounded that the subsidy scheme is “akin to one person having their electricity bill partially paid for almost their entire adult life;” and that is seen to cover at least six million Filipinos.
In reality though, that subsidy is not actually coming directly from the state coffers. Instead, it is being collected via the electric bills and serves as a subsidy being paid by other electricity consumers to benefit the marginalized segments of the population and that is not reckoned as a form of energy democracy, because even end-users struggling to make ends meet are being required to pay for those subsidies.