The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Energy Business Forum (AEBF-26) speaks of “innovation,” “investment,” and a “sustainable energy future”. It “[brings] together leaders from government, business, finance, and technology” to talk about “bankable opportunities, large-scale capital deployment, and the infrastructure required to power ASEAN’s growth”.
ASEAN policymakers and business leaders clearly aren’t asking the most important questions: Clean energy for whom? Innovation and investment for whom?
The organizers are transparent about the forum’s agenda – attracting investments, creating bankable projects, expanding public-private partnerships, and opening new opportunities for energy companies and financiers. All this is about creating private profits.
Yet what matters most to ordinary people is not the amount of investment, bankable projects, public-private partnerships, and energy companies and financiers – it’s simply whether electricity is more affordable, more reliable, and more accessible.
In her welcome message, the energy secretary said the forum is about “[delivering] a secure, resilient, and just and inclusive transition in ASEAN”. This is high-sounding rhetoric completely devoid of reflection about the Philippine experience.
The Philippines is arguably the most important place in ASEAN to ask these questions. For decades, our power sector has been among the most privatized and market-oriented in Asia. Yet Filipino households and enterprises pay the highest or among the highest electricity rates in Southeast Asia. If privatization, deregulation and investor-driven reforms are the solution, why do Filipinos still face such high power costs?
We have also already been told about the even broader costs of an obsolete energy model driven primarily by corporate profitability.
In Nueva Ecija, farmers faced land-grabbing and displacement by massive solar developments. In Talim Island, communities connected militarization to large energy projects. In Olongapo, indigenous people reported flooding because of solar farms. In the Sierra Madre, communities are opposing dam projects that threaten forests, watersheds, and biodiversity. The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) has spoken of the greenwashing of agrarian lands nationwide.
Across the country, local communities are always told that these are projects necessary for development. Yet the reality is they bear the social and environmental costs while large corporations capture the gains.
The most basic issue is who controls energy development, who benefits from it, and who pays the costs. This is why the energy question is not simply about the ASEAN Energy Business Forum’s narrow-minded fixation on making energy projects more profitable.
A genuine energy transition isn’t measured simply by megawatts installed or billions of dollars invested. It is measured by whether Filipino families can afford their electric bills, whether farmers and small businesses can access reliable power, whether communities are protected from displacement, and whether energy supports national development.
We are also concerned how the discussions of clean energy don’t talk about building domestic industrial capabilities in the Philippines or the rest of ASEAN, which means the default of importing technologies. ASEAN should not be a mere market for foreign equipment, foreign technology, and foreign capital. The energy transition is an opportunity to develop local manufacturing, engineering, research, and technological capabilities that create decent jobs and strengthen our economies.
Energy is too important to be treated simply as an investment opportunity and measured according to short-term profits. Electricity is a basic public necessity and a strategic foundation for national industrialization. The goal of energy policy should not primarily be to guarantee returns for investors. It should be to guarantee affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity for the people and to develop the national economy.
As ASEAN gathers in Manila, we call for an energy agenda that puts consumers before corporations, development before profits, and public welfare before private returns.
Electricity is a strategic public utility and instrument for development – it is not just another commodity to profit from. The measure of success should not be how attractive our energy systems are to foreign investors, but how well they serve our peoples, protect communities and the environment, and support genuine national industrialization and long-term development.
