In his second State of the Nation Address, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. castigated the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines or NGCP, the private concessionaire and operator of the nationwide transmission system, for incurring delays in the completion of 68 transmission projects around the country. The delayed projects include vital interconnection projects such as the Mindanao-Visayas and the Cebu-Panay-Negros interconnection projects.
In early July, the Energy Regulatory Commission asked NGCP to explain 37 reported pending transmission projects, which were delayed by of an average of three years, with the longest spanning more than seven years.
NGCP, which is 40 percent owned by the State Grid Corporation of China, is currently chaired by SGCC’s Chinese official. In a statement, NGCP vowed to expedite all delayed projects and said it would use its collaboration with SGCC to hasten the transition to renewable and sustainable energy sources.
Curiously, from NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza’s perspective, the call of President Marcos to expedite the transmission projects only highlighted NGCP’s role as an “enabler of power stability” in the country.
During my stint as president and CEO of the National Transmission Corporation or TransCo from 2017 to 2022, we pounded on those who cared to listen that NGCP had stagnated because of its greed for profits. During the last Senate hearing of the Committee on Energy, we found out that NGCP has been making profits from all these projects whose completion has been delayed for years.
NGCP is like an empire that has capitulated to its greed and merely pretends to listen to government authorities. It is greed that gives NGCP and its officials a false sense of entitlement, one which makes Alabanza utter those laughable claims that NGCP is the “enabler of power stability” in the country.
Enabling power stability or energy security in the country is the last of NGCP’s priorities as it serves a foreign master that has adverse territorial claims against our country.
A power grid is the lifeline of every nation, providing electricity for essential services and critical infrastructure such as police camps and military bases. This is why no sovereign nation in the world will allow foreign influence, control, and exploitation of their power grid.
With the Philippines’ recent pivot to America, the continued influence and control by China’s State Grid of NGCP poses a serious threat to our country’s own existence.
Energy security provides a critical foundation for sustaining economic growth, ensuring long stability, and significantly impacting the social well-being of the people. An adequate and affordable energy supply enables access to essential services such as healthcare, education, and communications, among others, which in turn contribute to facilitating poverty reduction leading to a better quality of life. These are the fundamental reasons why the government must take control of its own transmission system.
With the current territorial dispute in the West Philippine Sea and the presence of multiple EDCA sites, our country poses a national security threat to China. The national security and interests of China trump the concern for Philippine energy security and the well-being of Filipino consumers.
Logically speaking, therefore, it is in the best interests of China that power transmission projects in the country are delayed so that we may not be able to develop and pose a threat to China’s own claims. After all, a weak energy security is equal to a weak national defense.