Newly designated Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) officer-in-charge Jesse Hermogenes T. Andres will be taking the reign of the power industry’s regulatory realm with tons of immediate deliverables, primarily much-needed approvals of power supply agreements (PSAs) as well as setting the reserve prices of scheduled renewable energy (RE) capacity auctions.

According to industry sources, the new chief at the Commission will have ‘extremely short learning curve’ because the industry cannot afford to let go of massive-scale energy investments– primarily in the RE segment of which prospective capital commitments already surpassed P1.2 trillion mark, as earlier reported by the Board of Investments.

While Andres has yet to take his seat at the Commission, the swirling guessing game among industry players and other relevant stakeholders is whether his stint will just really be temporary or it will eventually come at stretched duration.

Legal experts noted that there is still a need to declare the ERC Chairmanship vacant, otherwise, Andres as ERC officer-in-charge (OIC) would not be able to sign documents, including the decisions that shall be rendered by the Commission – and that will be an exercise in futility when it comes to his appointment.

As of this writing, there is no declaration yet of vacancy at the ERC top post, as the motion for reconsideration filed by suspended ERC Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta has yet to be resolved by the Office of the Ombudsman.

The Presidential Communications Office has announced over the weekend the designation of Andres as ERC-OIC, which will be a move from his current post as Undersecretary of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and as Executive Director of the DOJ’s Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT).

Andres, is a luminary in the legal profession who took up his law degree from the University of the Philippines (UP); and in his younger years, he worked with the Ponce Enrile Cayetano Bautista Reyes and Manalastas (PECABAR) Law Offices of now Chief Presidential Legal Adviser Juan Ponce Enrile and the late Renato Cayetano, who is the father of current Senate Committee on Energy Chairperson Pia Cayetano – that was before putting up his own law practice.

He also served previously as Chief of Staff (COS) during the Vice Presidency of Noli De Castro; while his elite academic social affiliation is with UP’s Upsilon Sigma Phi fraternity, the same brotherhood which has the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr. as well as House Speaker Martin Romualdez and Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla in its membership roll.

On workload awaiting Andres at the ERC, it is within this year’s fourth quarter that the Department of Energy (DOE) is scheduling the green energy auction (GEA) for geothermal and hydropower capacities; then there will be another batch of tender for other RE capacities across solar, wind, biomass and waste-to-energy technologies by next year.

Next year’s GEA is likewise seen as a unique exercise because the DOE will be pushing for the integrated renewable energy and energy storage system (IRESS) package as part of the offers, so RE can be lined up as a more reliable source of electricity supply for the country.

Apart from that, the energy department is contemplating on supplemental competitive bidding for liquefied natural gas (LNG) capacity, which could be set as ancillary services procurement that will prospectively be underwritten by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) as the counterparty.

On PSAs, rate adjustment applications as well as rule-making petitions, the magnitude of pending work for the ERC had been more than 2,600 as of end-2023.

Swift approvals on the power supply agreements (PSAs) are highly necessary so the consumers can be spared from electricity service interruptions, as well as rate hikes primarily in the peak-demand months of summer.