Energy Policy and Development Program 2016 Annual Report

The program aims to help strengthen the capacity of the Philippine government to formulate coherent and evidence-based policies and strategies for the cost-effective use of energy resources in order to achieve environmentally-sound energy development. EPDP's products and services are used as input by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Department of Energy (DOE), other government agencies, the academe, and the private sector. EPDP is a research initiative that informs policy- and decision-making in the energy sector. It also informs private sector business strategies for cost-effective, sustainable, and broad-based growth and economic development. The program is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the UPecon Foundation, Inc. EPDP is chaired by the Socioeconomic Planning Secretary/NEDA Director-General, with the Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary, USAID Mission Director, and UPecon Foundation Chairperson serving as members of the Program Steering Committee. The program has four components: research, policy development and advisory, capacity building, and communication. The research component develops and uses theories, gathers evidence in the Philippines and other countries to support energy-related discussion and policy-making. The policy development and advisory component uses input from research to generate evidence-based analysis and technical advice on energy policies. The capacity building component conducts training, learning programs, and fora to increase the capacity of government, academe, and the private sector to manage energy-related programs and issues. The communication component builds support for environmentally-sound energy development and communicates research, policies, and capacity-building programs through fora, dialogues, online and print media. In its second fiscal year (October 2015-September 2016), EPDP exceeded its targets and made direct and tangible contributions to improving decision- and policy-making that supports cost-effective and environmentally-sound energy development. The program implemented most of the planned activities and made notable progress vis-à-vis its three intermediate result areas. Key achievements under each of these result areas include: improved capacity of the Government of the Philippines (GPH) to guide and inform energy-related policy and practice through enhanced research; increased capacity of GPH to undertake and sustain coherent and evidence-based energy policy and decision-making; and increased EPDP capacity to share results of energy-related and complementary economic research. EPDP supported 41 presentations of EPDP research studies in nine national and international conferences and five lectures, supported a total of 66 researchers and staff to participate in local and international energy-related conferences, training courses, forums, and lectures, and organized an EPDP international conference and seven other EPDP-led forums, which gathered 249 stakeholders. The program also completed the migration of the EPDP website to the UPecon Foundation server for a more permanent repository of EPDP products and updated social media accounts, jointly enabling the program to reach more than 1,300 individuals. Despite the constrained resources in the third fiscal year, EPDP's accomplishments in its second year have positioned the Program to maximize the use of available resources in achieving the desired results in the third fiscal year.