LAWAAN, Eastern Samar — A lawmaker on Sunday has made an appeal to the Department of Energy to seek development of small and environment-friendly renewable energy projects to address rural electrification and stabilize electricity in the countryside.

House Minority Leader and 4Ps Partylist Representative Marcelino Libanan, during the inauguration of the rehabilitated 1MW Amanjuray Hydropower Plant here, stressed that the revival of the power plant would help ease Eastern Samar’s lingering electricity supply problem.

“We are counting on the hydropower plant’s restoration to help provide relief to Eastern Samar residents that have long been reeling from recurring outages and elevated electricity rates,” Libanan said.

“The Department of Energy should encourage the development of small, environment-friendly renewable energy projects in the countryside to address rural electrification,” he added.

The Amanjuray hydropower plant is a run-of-the-river hydroelectric system that harvests the energy from the flowing water generated by the Amanjuray Falls, one of the four waterfalls in the Bolusao River Watershed Forest Reserve.

It was originally built by the NEA in 1991 with the help of a grant from the United Kingdom and the NEA has since transferred the facility to ESAMELCO Renewable Energy Corp., which rehabilitated the system.

In 2021, the United Nations Development Program said it will fund the rehabilitation of the damaged Amanjuray hydropower plant to increase the renewable energy portfolio of the Eastern Samar Electric Cooperative Inc.

The rehabilitation of the power plant was made through the Development for Renewable Energy Applications Mainstreaming and Market Sustainability Project, which is a five-year project being implemented by DoE through its Renewable Energy Management Bureau in partnership with the Global Environment Facility and the UNDP.

ESAMELCO serves a total of 597 barangays in Eastern Samar and has an estimated customer base of around 117,443. The cooperative operates and maintains over 2,101 kilometers of distribution lines and has a peak load demand of 23 megawatts, according to updated reports.