[Part I] The ERC Under Chair Dimalanta

There is a sense of disquiet—of something unfinished—in the resignation of Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) Chair and CEO Monalisa C. Dimalanta, who stepped down in July 2025, leaving behind a regulatory post not just technical in nature but moral in expectation.

In her three-year stewardship, beginning in August 2022, Dimalanta did not merely preside; she disrupted, rebalanced, and reminded the power sector that electricity is not just a commodity—it is a public good. (Photo: Department of Energy Philippines)

Her departure from the quasi-judicial body overseeing the country’s energy sector felt less like a routine transition and more like the flickering of a lamp left unsupervised—its glow vulnerable to the winds of vested interests.

In her three-year stewardship, beginning in August 2022, Dimalanta did not merely preside; she disrupted, rebalanced, and reminded the power sector that electricity is not just a commodity—it is a public good.

Under her watch, the ERC pivoted from passive oversight to a posture of proactive reform, one aimed at expanding the Filipino consumer’s power of choice and grounding electricity pricing in fairness, not franchise entitlement.

Take the Retail Aggregation Program (RAP), a cornerstone of her legacy.

Through this initiative, schools, banks, water utilities, manufacturing hubs—even entire industrial parks—were enabled to consolidate demand and directly negotiate lower electricity rates from power suppliers, sidestepping the usual dominance of electric cooperatives and utilities.

It was a quiet revolution—technical in jargon, but radical in impact.

By July 2025, ten RAP switches had been completed nationwide. Early adopters like PLDT and Smart reported savings of up to ₱2 per kilowatt-hour—savings that eventually trickled down to the everyday consumer.

Parallel to this, Dimalanta fortified the broader Retail Competition and Open Access (RCOA) policy, still limited to users with a demand of 500 kW or higher.

The numbers tell the story: ₱19 billion in savings recorded last year, and an aggregate ₱49.1 billion saved by Retail Electricity Supplier (RES) customers as of mid-2024—enjoying rates nearly half of what traditional utilities charge.

But Dimalanta’s true voltage lay not just in engineering consumer savings, but in confronting the wattage of corporate abuse. Her most electrifying moment as Chair may have come in the standoff with the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

The issue: ₱130 billion in advertising and related spending over a four-year period—costs NGCP sought to pass on to consumers under the guise of “information dissemination.”

Dimalanta was not amused. She demanded justification—not just as a regulator but as a citizen standing in proxy for millions plugged into sky-high electricity rates.

Her argument was unambiguous: If these expenditures were meant to educate the public, then NGCP must prove their operational necessity.

If they were mere vanity projects disguised as public service, then consumers had no business footing the bill.

The confrontation exposed a deeper fault line—between privatization as a promise of efficiency and privatization as a veil for excess. Dimalanta stood firm.

In a country where consumers already juggle inflated utility bills and unpredictable power supply, she made it clear: corporate philanthropy, PR blitzes, and cushy employee benefits must be drawn from private profits—not from the wallets of the weary.

The ERC’s position, under her command, was distilled into a compelling metaphor: imagine NGCP running a glossy, full-page ad that says “Bawal humawak ng live wire.”

Noble advice—but should the public be shocked twice—first by the warning, and then by the bloated bill that funds it?

Adoracion Navarro, senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, recognized the moment as a watershed. She noted how such unchecked corporate expenses had long slipped beneath the radar, unchallenged.

With Dimalanta, the switch was thrown—and the current of accountability surged.

It wasn’t about shutting down responsible giving. It was about restoring trust. And in the energy sector, trust is currency. After all, how much confidence should we invest in a transmission monopoly that literally holds the power switch to our homes?

Predictably, NGCP did not take this regulatory jolt quietly. Cynthia Alabanza, the company’s Assistant Vice President, called it “unfair” for the ERC to retroactively apply its scrutiny. But Dimalanta was unmoved.

Accountability, she implied, is not a question of timing—but of principle. Privatization must never mean privatized scrutiny.

What she and the ERC stood for, in the end, was not simply the disallowance of billions in questionable spending.

It was the reassertion of a principle: that the energy sector must serve the public, not siphon from it. That power should illuminate households—not embolden corporate impunity.

But now, with Dimalanta gone, the ₱130 billion issue hangs in limbo—a live wire with no clear grounding. It is a fiscal ghost haunting the corridors of the ERC, staring down the new leadership.

Will they stand firm against the voltage of influence? Or will they, like so many before them, allow the current of reform to flicker and fade?

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READ: [Part II] Of Solar Queens and Phantom Grids