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⚡ Energy Ember Meralco 2000 - Aug 2026

The Grid That Got Less Renewable

Renewables supplied 42.9% of Philippine electricity in 2000 and 23.3% in 2025 — while renewable generation itself nearly doubled. Demand outran it. Coal took the difference.

58.7%
Coal share of generation, 2025
23.3%
Renewable share, from 42.9% in 2000
2.7×
Total generation since 2000
3.3×
Thailand’s coal share
Data Sources
Coverage
Generation 2000-2025 annual · Meralco rates Mar 2025 - Aug 2026 monthly
Tech Stack
PythonDuckDBChart.js
Key Takeaways

The renewable share fell by 19.6 points in twenty-five years while renewable output rose 28.7 TWh from 19.4. Both are true. Quoting either one alone gets the country wrong.

  • Total generation went from 45.3 TWh to 123.1 TWh — 2.7 times as much electricity. Almost all of that increase was met with coal.
  • Coal is 58.7% of generation, up from 27.0% in 2005 and 3.3 times Thailand's 17.8%.
  • The renewable base is unusual: 8.2% sits in Ember's "other renewables" bucket, which for the Philippines is mostly geothermal — more than hydro at 10.3%. Solar is 2.44% and wind 1.19%.
  • The Meralco rate series covers 15 of 93 months — 16%. The earlier version of this page charted it without saying so.

Three Times The Electricity

Before any share can be read, the denominator has to be visible. The Philippines generates roughly three times the electricity it did in 2000, and every share on this page moves against that.

Total generation by year, TWh

Generation now
123.1 TWh

From 45.3 TWh in 2000.

Growth
2.7×

Demand roughly tripled in twenty-five years.

Renewable output
28.7 TWh

Up from 19.4 TWh — 1.5 times as much renewable electricity, and a smaller share of a much larger total.

The Share That Went Backwards

This is the finding the earlier version of this page missed by charting only coal. The renewable share did not stall — it fell, by nearly twenty points, from a base that was already largely hydro and geothermal.

Renewable and fossil share of generation, %

Renewable share, 2000
42.9%

Large hydro and geothermal, before the coal build-out.

Renewable share, 2025
23.3%

A fall of 19.6 points.

Why both numbers matter

Renewable generation nearly doubled over the same period. The share fell because coal absorbed almost all of the demand growth, not because renewables shrank.

What The Grid Actually Runs On

All 8 fuels Ember tracks, latest year. The composition is unusual for the region: geothermal is larger than hydro, and larger than solar and wind combined by a wide margin.

Generation mix by fuel, 2025

Coal
58.7%

Up from 27.0% in 2005.

Geothermal and other renewables
8.2%

Ember files Philippine geothermal here. It is the second-largest renewable source and larger than hydro.

Solar and wind
3.63%

Combined. Solar 2.44% and wind 1.19% — the technologies that grew fastest elsewhere are still marginal here.

Against The Region

Coal share for the Philippines and its neighbours at 2025. The gap is not marginal.

Coal share of generation over time, ASEAN peers

Philippines
58.7%

Coal share of generation in 2025.

Thailand
17.8%

The Philippines runs 3.3 times as much coal, proportionally.

Singapore
0.9%

Almost none — a gas grid, and a reminder that "Southeast Asian" is not a single energy story.

One Distributor's Rate

Meralco's all-in residential rate, for the 15 of 93 months that could be retrieved. The advisories are published per month and older ones fall off the site, so this is a window rather than a series.

Meralco all-in residential rate, months retrieved

Lowest month found
P12.26

Per kWh, all-in.

Highest month found
P14.83

A spread of P2.57 across 15 months.

Coverage
16%

15 of 93 months. The chart plots only months that exist; it does not interpolate across the 78 that do not.

What This Page Does Not Cover

Generation mix and one distributor's residential rate. That is less than the topic deserves, and the gaps are specific.

Rates outside Meralco

Meralco serves Metro Manila and nearby provinces. Every other distribution utility and every electric cooperative sets its own rate, and ERC publishes those in filings rather than as a series. Nothing here speaks to what the rest of the country pays.

The Meralco series is thin

15 of 93 months were found — 16%. The advisory pages are published per month and older ones fall off. The chart draws only the months that exist and the gaps are visible rather than bridged.

Nothing about why

Fuel costs, capacity auctions, the WESM spot market and the regulatory rate base all sit behind this and none are in these CSVs. The page reports what the mix and the rate did, not what drove them.

Method

Two fetchers and one derive step over five CSVs.

Ember, not a national source

Ember compiles national statistics into a comparable series, which is what makes the ASEAN comparison possible at all. It is a secondary source and the citation says so.

Geothermal is not broken out

Ember files it under "other renewables" for the Philippines. It is labelled on the page rather than silently folded into a renewables total, because for this country specifically that bucket is mostly one technology.

A column that meant two things

ph_generation_mix.csv had a column named source holding the energy source — Coal, Gas, Solar — colliding with this repository's convention that source is provenance. It is now fuel, with provenance in source_dataset.

Every fuel must be classified

The renewable/fossil rollup fails loudly on an unclassified fuel rather than letting it drop out of both totals, which would leave the shares summing to less than 100 without erroring.

Meralco parsing

The all-in residential rate is taken from the overall-rate sentence in each advisory. An earlier version matched the generation charge instead — about P7-8 against a real P13-15 — and was caught by an overlap check, because consecutive advisories cover the same month twice and disagreed.

Verification

Every figure on this page is bound to a query in facts.sql and re-checked on each build.

Key Findings & Summary

  • The renewable share of Philippine generation fell from 42.9% in 2000 to 23.3% in 2025 — a drop of -19.6 points.
  • It fell while renewable generation ROSE, from 19.4 to 28.7 TWh. Total generation went up 2.7 times and coal absorbed nearly all of the difference.
  • Coal is now 58.7% of generation, 3.3 times Thailand's 17.8% and far above Singapore's 0.9%.
  • The renewable base is geothermal-led: 8.2% against hydro at 10.3%, with solar at 2.44% and wind at 1.19% still marginal.
  • The Meralco rate series covers 15 of 93 months. It covers one distributor in one region, and says nothing about what the rest of the country pays.

Sources & Citations

Every figure on this page traces to one of these, through a CSV in data/ph-electricity/. Each is checked against its source query on every build.

Generation by fuel and coal share, Philippines and Southeast Asian peers, 2000 onward — Ember compiles national statistics into a comparable series

Monthly all-in residential rate per kWh — Published monthly by the distribution utility; parsed from advisory pages