A recent wave of rolling brownouts has intensified concerns over the fragility of the Philippine power system, with an economist warning that outdated transmission infrastructure has emerged as a major threat to national energy security.

Adoracion Navarro, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, said during a recent webinar that the country’s electricity problems are no longer limited to power generation shortages.

Instead, the situation has evolved into a broader issue involving the reliability and resilience of the national grid.

Navarro pointed to widening gaps between electricity demand and transmission development. Citing findings from her study on transmission sector reforms, she noted that electricity consumption in the country expanded by about 140 percent between 2003 and 2024, while transmission lines grew by only 11 percent over the same 21-year period.