Name: Piolo Julius G.

Cabagnot Date Submitted: June 9, 2020

Course & Year: BSME – III Offering No.: Z189
MEng 141.3 – Energy Engineering & Management
Insight Paper for Lecture-Series 5

Electricity is one of man's greatest achievements. It has become an inseparable part of

daily life, and it is hard to comprehend a world without it, since it performs a wide range of functions
in our daily lives, including connectivity in the form of radio, television, e-mail, internet, and much
more. With such a broad list of electrical benefits, it's no surprise that electrification is increasing
and becoming a fundamental prerequisite for sustainability.

Energy access is a critical enabler of socioeconomic growth. Energy is required for a wide
range of applications, including home, productive, and societal infrastructure. “Universal access
to modern energy by 2030” has been recommended as one of the three core pillars of the
Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) program. According to World Bank data from 2018, 94.9
percent of the population in the Philippines have access to electricity. With such widespread
access, the Philippine government has set an ambitious aim of prioritizing efforts in order to
maintain momentum and reach 100 percent electrification by 2022, according to the DOE's
Philippine Energy Plan (Department of Energy). A coordinated worldwide effort, significant
additional funding, the deployment of new technology, and a wide range of treatments aimed at
underserved people will be required to achieve that goal. The effectiveness of such actions is
dependent, in part, on the capacity to evaluate the level of access to energy, both in terms of
planning and investment, and, subsequently, in terms of progress tracking. With this, ESMAP
came up with a new approach, the Multi-Tier Framework. Under this approach, access is
described as the ability to receive energy that is adequate, available when needed, dependable,
of good quality, cheap, legal, convenient, healthy, and safe for all essential energy applications
across household and establishments. Defining and assessing energy access by taking into
account energy supply attributes leads to a better understanding of how various interventions
affect access. This is to thoroughly address the country's situation, such as electrical energy
poverty, and ensure that no challenges are overlooked while developing short or long-term goals.
Electrical energy poverty is more than just a lack of access to power. It depends on the price of
electricity, quality, how it is utilized, reliability, and sustainability are much more important aspects
for this particular dilemma. Knowing the findings of the study, it is possible to conclude that the
country's potential to execute nationwide electrification is still a long way off. Nonetheless, it is
worth noting that numerous national and international organizations are undertaking collaborative
efforts to help the government achieve its goal of expanding country-wide electrification.

The Philippines with its abundant energy resources is no doubt capable of reaching more
in the future. I believe that with the right tuning of priorities, only then will the country's
development momentum be maintained, and the country's ultimate goals towards an improved
electrification landscape will be realized. And because global efforts are focusing on sustainable
development, simply delivering power is no longer sufficient. Electrification activities must
consequently be directed toward the community's social and economic growth. Government
policies must guarantee that electrification initiatives include interventions to encourage
productive uses of power as well as to promote power use for economic growth and sustainability.