DESPITE how it has been portrayed in recent news reports, the Philippines is doing an admirable job of shifting away from a reliance on coal for power generation. A new report by Global Energy Monitor shows that while the Philippines technically ranked sixth in the world for new coal generating capacity in 2022, the development of coal in the country is 'rapidly shrinking.'

'Coal plant proposals in the Philippines have been rapidly shrinking since the 2020 moratorium on plants for which the permitting process had not already begun, with capacity in pre-construction declining 84 percent from 10.1 gigawatts (GW) in 2019 to 1.6 GW in 2022,' the report said. The moratorium referred to was issued by the Duterte administration and has been maintained under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The reason for the Philippines' deceptively high ranking among countries in terms of new coal capacity was the commissioning of a single coal plant, the 1.3-GW Dinginin expansion of the Mariveles Power Plant in Bataan.