House Deputy Speaker and Bacolod Rep. Albee Benitez is pushing Congress to grant President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. emergency powers to tackle the Visayas power crisis.
The proposal gained momentum during Saturday’s joint House hearing in Bacolod City, where Energy Secretary Sharon Garin backed extraordinary measures to speed up new power plants and transmission projects needed to avert more brownouts.
She acknowledged that emergency powers could help government move faster as the Visayas grapples with tight reserves, recurring grid alerts and rotational outages.
Asked if emergency powers could hasten construction of generating plants and transmission lines, Garin replied: “Yes, Mr. Chair.”
Benitez immediately pressed Congress to follow through.
“Taking off from the response of the DOE secretary…favoring emergency powers to do certain actions that would alleviate the present situation, I would endorse…the passage of this emergency power, especially at this time where we needed it most,” Benitez said.
The numbers presented during the hearing showed the urgency.
Visayas power supply stood at about 2,575 megawatts against afternoon demand of 2,624 MW. The gap widens at night, forcing the region to depend on electricity coming from Luzon and Mindanao.
“Today, Visayas is a net importer of power,” Benitez said.
He warned that years of insufficient investment in local generation have left the region vulnerable whenever major power plants go offline or transmission constraints prevent electricity from reaching areas where it is needed.
Permanent baseload solutions are not expected before 2028, DOE officials told lawmakers.
For the immediate term, government is looking at battery energy storage systems, power barges, the restoration of unavailable generating units, additional renewable energy and transmission upgrades.
Emergency powers could give government more flexibility to accelerate these projects, secure additional reserve power and cut through regulatory and permitting delays during critical shortages.
Benitez also wants Congress to review the Electric Power Industry Reform Act to determine whether existing rules limit government’s ability to intervene during a power crisis.
“We are not here just to count megawatts. We are here to make every megawatt count,” he said.
For Benitez, reliable electricity is ultimately an economic issue for the Visayas.
“Reliable power is not a luxury. It is a necessity,” he said. “We cannot build a strong economy on a weak energy system.”
