The Department of Energy (DOE) is scheduling another round of consultation this month on the expected acceleration in the electric vehicles (EV) market, primarily increasing the mandatory EV fleet adoption to 10 percent from an earlier prescription of 5.0-percent. According to DOE Director Patrick T. Aquino, the agency will be presenting new figures to the relevant stakeholders during a consultation targeted in the week of March 20 this year. “Whether it’s a clean energy scenario or business-as-usual, the figures will be shown again to the public on the week of March 20…it was adjusted upwards, originally, we just indicated 5.0-percent as what was in the law,” he said. The 5.0 percent mandate for EV fleet is primarily targeted for government agencies under the Electric Vehicle Industry Development Act (EVIDA) or Republic Act 11697 that was passed into law under the Duterte administration. “As a result of the strategic planning workshop conducted by the DOE, there was consensus to bring it to 10-percent,” Aquino noted. The energy official expounded that such level of EV deployment had been propounded within the dictum of ‘business-as-usual’ paradigm; but under a ‘clean energy scenario’, there is a higher end target of up to 50-percent rollout of EVs by 2040. “Originally, the law just indicates 5.0-percent. Then we did numbers on that, and from the strategic planning workshop, that was increased to 10-percent,” he reiterated. Aquino similarly shared “what we have in the roadmap is: government has more aggressive requirements on itself, so there is a scenario wherein government will just be procuring electric vehicles at a certain point, I think that will come in the medium term.” When asked if the 10-percent EV mandate will be enforced per government agency, Aquino emphasized that the nitty gritty of such policy will have to be fleshed out yet in the forthcoming public consultations. At this stage, he similarly stated the need for wider government intervention to ensure faster and broader commercial scale rollout of EVs in the country – be it with the government or for private sector use. “There are other things that we’re recommending that needs to get passed, for us to aggressively reach the target because based on what I can confirm is that: at the end of it whether that’s business-as-usual or the clean energy scenario, without those additional government interventions, vehicles of internal combustion engines may still prevail,” he pointed out. Aquino further indicated that the recommended interventions will be beyond the fiscal incentives already laid down by government, including Executive Order No. 12 which modified the import duty rates for electric vehicles.