Coal plants in Luzon and Palawan
OPINION, PROVINCES & PROSPERITY
Bienvenido S. Oplas Jr.
April 07, 2026
https://palawan-news.com/coal-plants-in-luzon-and-palawan/
The continuing Iran war has led to high oil-gas prices worldwide affecting not only the cost of transportation (air, land, sea), fertilizers, petrochemical products, also the cost of electricity in places that depend on oil gensets for electricity generation.
Palawan, Mindoro Oriental and Occidental, Romblon, Masbate, Marinduque, Camiguin, other off-grid island-provinces in the Philippines are running mostly on diesel or bunker fuel gensets. The cost of diesel power generation is easily P20-25/kwh before the Iran war, now it could be at least P40/kwh, generation cost alone.
Coal plants win competitive selection process (CSP) biddings at P5-6/kwh, meaning the coal power company can still make a profit at that price while giving 24/7 electricity to the private distribution utility or electric cooperatives that contracted the coal plant.
Below I list the provinces in Luzon that host big coal plants. Many people who dislike coal say that the energy source causes big health problems, economic damage and related problems. So I included also the provincial GDP of those provinces, also those provinces that do not host coal plants like Palawan, Mindoro Oriental and Occidental.
Coal-hosting provinces have big provincial GDP. They have been hosting those coal plants way back in the 1980s (Batangas), 1990s (Bulacan, Pangasinan, Quezon, Zambales), and the 2000s. These provinces are not known to have sickly people compared to provinces that do not host coal plants.
Table 1. Coal plants in Luzon
Compared to our neighbors in East Asia, the Philippines has the smallest coal power generation of only 79.4 terawatt-hours (1 TWH = 1,000 GWH or 1 million MWH). Greenie Japan and S. Korea have coal per capita generation that are 3.5x and 5.2x larger than the Philippines (see table 2).
Table 2. Coal power generation in terawatt-hours (TWH) and per capita, East Asia
Global coal prices have also increased but at lower percent level than oil or gas. For instance, Newcastle coal has increased from $118/ton last February 27 (day before the attack of Iran) to $138/ton in March 25.
The Universal Charge for Missionary Electrification (UC-ME) is rising for electricity consumers of on-grid customers because they subsidize the consumers of off-grid places and provinces. Soon that subsidy will decline if not be abolished and consumers of off-grid provinces will endure very high cost of electricity from diesel and bunker fuel.
An option is to have coal plants, or nuclear plants that do not need any subsidy. Solar and wind power will occupy huge land area and cannot provide 24/7 electricity.
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See also:
PN 1, Provincial GDP, challenges, and opportunities for Palawan, March 20, 2026
PN 2, Ho Chi Minh and Puerto Princesa, some observations, April 03, 2026
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