Energy efficiency can no longer sit in the background of the Philippines’ climate strategy — and the Philippine Energy Efficiency Alliance (PE2) is pressing the government to act before the window to cut emissions at scale narrows further.

This urgency was reflected in a meeting earlier today between PE2 officials and the Climate Change Commission (CCC), where both groups explored closer collaboration to support the Department of Energy (DOE) in positioning energy efficiency as a central pillar of the country’s climate change mitigation efforts.

“The Climate Change Commission has already reaffirmed the Philippines’ dedication to climate action through green economic pathways,” said CCC vice chairman and executive director Robert E.A. Borje, who led the CCC delegation. He pointed to a rapidly changing economic landscape and fast-moving technological innovations as forces that are intensifying the need for efficiency-driven reforms.

“[Energy efficiency] needs to be embedded in consumer behavior, which is why the Commission is playing an important role in ensuring that it becomes a priority of the Government,” Borje said.

Borje warned that the country risks missing major emissions-cutting opportunities if energy efficiency continues to be undervalued. “We’re underappreciating the contribution of energy efficiency. If we don’t work on it, then we would not be optimizing opportunities to reduce the carbon impact of not just government and organizations but of the entire economy. We cannot merely rely on renewables to decarbonize the energy sector.

We need to go through the process of strengthening energy efficiency as an equally important pillar of the country’s climate change mitigation strategy,” he told PE2.

Response to global commitments

The PE2 delegation was led by President Alexander Ablaza and included Vice President for external affairs Theresa Acedillo-Lapuz, policy, advocacy, and external affairs advisor Archie Diaz, and secretariat manager Hazel Planco.

Ablaza anchored PE2’s push on global commitments, noting that more than 200 countries supported a consensus at COP28 to double energy-efficiency progress by 2030. He cited the International Energy Agency’s view that doubling reductions in energy intensity to four percent over the next five years would put the world on track to cut today’s energy use by eight percent, while still powering an economy twice as large with two billion more people by 2050.

“In every clean energy roadmap, just energy transition, decarbonization, and net zero conversation, we need to deploy energy efficiency and conservation at a much larger scale compared to renewables and bridge a wider investment gap through 2030-2050,” Ablaza said.

He added that the shift must involve all sectors. “All energy end-users in the Philippines should be part of a societal transformation toward a decarbonized and less energy-intensive economy through 2050. We should support DOE in steadily improving the awareness and compliance of commercial, industrial, transport establishments, households, small businesses, and even Government entities with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act,” he said.

PE2 said mobilizing P12 trillion in energy efficiency investments through 2040 could slash energy use by 182 million tons of oil equivalent, generate more than P36 trillion in energy savings, avoid 1.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, defer over 45,900 megawatts in infrastructure upgrades, and create about 9.1 million green jobs.

Both CCC and PE2 agreed to pursue a follow-up meeting to discuss a proposed Memorandum of Understanding to formalize collaboration on energy efficiency.