As of June 2023, 2.5 million households across the Philippines remain without electricity, many of them in remote island communities accessible only by boat. Here, the absence of reliable power constrains livelihoods, limits access to health and education services and deepens economic inequality.
The Philippines' Department of Energy (DOE) has set an ambitious target: 100% household electrification by 2028. Microgrids, small-scale, renewable energy systems, are central to achieving this, particularly for geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs), beyond the reach of the national grid. Yet, a persistent barrier has stalled progress, in that developers cannot accurately size systems, assess financial viability, or confidently bid on microgrid auctions without granular, community-level energy demand data.
In remote, low-demand areas, this data gap makes perceived investment risk high and project preparation costs prohibitive. This is precisely the problem that Trama Tecno Ambiental (TTA) and CSi Energy Solutions is working with the DOE to solve, under the Philippines-UK PACT Country Fund.
The project is delivering pre-feasibility studies for ten underserved communities across the provinces of Camarines Norte and Palawan, communities identified under the Philippines' National Total Electrification Roadmap as priority microgrid sites. These are island sub-divisions like Macolabo, Quinapaguian, Apuao and Caringo in Camarines Norte, alongside six communities in Araceli, Palawan, with a combined population of over 6,900 people and approximately 1,500 households.
Alongside pre-feasibility work, the project is also developing a Philippines instance of the Energy Access Explorer (EAE), an open-source geospatial planning platform developed by the World Resources Institute, in close collaboration with the DOE. Once populated with Philippine data, the tool will allow government planners to visualise energy demand and supply indicators at a national scale, and prioritise future microgrid sites with greater precision and confidence.
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Together, these outputs directly address the barriers of limited data and lack of evidence, to inform policy change. By reducing information asymmetry and lowering project development risk, the project aims to catalyse private investment, strengthen the DOE's microgrid auction programme, and ultimately accelerate the delivery of clean, reliable electricity to communities that need it most. The path to full electrification runs through better data, which Philippines-UK PACT is helping to map. As the Philippines ramps up renewable energy deployment under the Philippine Energy Plan's Clean Energy Scenario, which aims to reach 100% household electrification by 2028, it is imperative that this shift towards clean power is also a just transition, one that actively includes and uplifts disadvantaged and marginalised communities. |
Click here to read more about Philippines-UK PACT.