{
  "id": 12906949,
  "title": "Regulatory failure",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/08/regulatory-failure",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-10-08T16:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Philippine Star Business",
    "slug": "philippine-star-business",
    "url": "https://www.philstar.com/business/2026/10/09/2561835/regulatory-failure"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The power crisis in the Visayas region is a result of regulatory failures within the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). During a joint congressional hearing in Bacolod City, Energy Secretary Sharon Garin admitted that the crisis stems from significant \"planning lapses\" by the government. This is not the first time the DOE has faced criticism for \"paper planning,\" as regulators had listed plants that were broken down for years as part of the grid's dependable capacity. By including \"phantom megawatts,\" the DOE artificially inflated the region's safety margin and justified inaction, as the grid appeared fine on paper.\n\nLawmakers pointed out that the DOE failed to accurately project regional growth, leaving the Visayas with no new major baseload capacity for an extended period. Moreover, the agency did not react appropriately to the poor performance of the Panay power plants over the years. Grid alerts from September revealed the extent of DOE negligence, with critical details such as available capacity at 2,153MW, peak demand at 2,462MW, and 12 plants forced outages in September alone, including some since August 2026.\n\nThe situation is dire, with three plants offline since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2021. It is clear that the DOE had ample time to secure alternative power sources, such as power barges, which should have been stationed in the area earlier. Due to lenient penalties and the lack of revoking operating permits for chronically broken facilities, generation companies have minimal pressure to maintain or quickly fix their plants.\n\nThe DOE has a history of planning and regulatory failures, including allowing demand in Cebu to outpace new power projects, focusing on large-scale projects like the Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP) and Luzon subsea cables instead of local power plants, approving solar projects without mandatory battery backups, and ignoring the increasing unreliability of aging coal power plants. These issues have led to a lack of local buffer and an inability to handle simultaneous plant outages, triggering yellow or red alerts when even a single unit goes down. The DOE has treated generators with kid gloves, failing to act on plants that have been offline for years and turning a chronic systemic problem into an emergency.",
  "summary": "The power crisis in the Visayas is the consequence of regulatory failure on the part of the Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}