A few years ago, several hours of load-shedding in Pakistan was very common, even in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan was without electricity for 6 hours on daily basis. Thanks to CPEC, thanks to China, who has completed several power projects and the people of Pakistan are relieved a lot. Now there is still load-shedding but only for couple of hours. The country was able to produce 16000 MW of electricity in the 7 decades almost. And most of the mega projects were completed in 1960s or 1970. Last 4 decades the nation was unable to add any significant amount of power into national grid.
China helped Pakistan to over-come its power shortage and just within few years, under CPEC, the country was able to add 11000 MW of power into National Grid. There are several power projects under execution or in the pipe line. It is believed, that next couple of years and we may get rid of load-shedding absolutely. However, it is also expected that due to planned industrialization, the demand may also increase tremendously. We still need to focus on the power generation, transmission and distribution. As the transmission is rather old and line losses are rather high. There is a need to up-grade our transmission system on urgent basis. The major issue is still the distribution, which resulted in theft of electricity. Line losses and theft made electricity rather expensive as it has to be recovered from consumers.
However, Pakistan possess potential of 65000 MW hydropower generation. Some of the sits are natural dams and suits for electricity production easily. Building big dams or mega dams, require a lot of investment as well as technical expertise too. But, small dams are easily constructed by our private sector. The requirement of investment is within the reach of our private sector and the technology required is also available within the country.
Dams also store water which will be additional value for Pakistan. As Pakistan is a country which faces water related disaster twice a year. During the rainy season, heavy rains causes flood every year and damages our crops, cattle’s, villages and loss of human live. Floods cause spread of seasonal diseases and epidemics also cause a big loss to nation. Just after a few month, Pakistan faces drought season too. During the drought season, water shortage cause big damage to human life and animals’ and husbandry. Crops suffered heavy losses due to shortage of water.
If appropriate dams are built, it may generate power to meet the national requirements as well it stores water during rainy season to avoid floods and utilize water during the drought season. We can overcome some of our serious problems by indigenous technology and domestic resources, without going to International donors.
Usually building big dams requires a long time 10-15 years, but our political system is based on 5 years tenure term. Most of political parties do not initiate any project, which cannot be completed within their tenure and they get benefits of completed projects during the election. As a practice, most of political parties never takes any initiatives, which may goes to credit of next government. But recently, Pakistani voters have become matured and they understands the worth of long term projects and may vote for those who are visionary leaders and sincere with Pakistan, and take long tern initiatives for the best interest of the nation. Our political parties may also up-date their strategies accordingly.
Not only hydropower, even Pakistan is rich with coal. Only Thar coal can meet the nation’s energy requirement for next 500 years. Coal technologies are on its path of rapid development. There exists technologies to convert coal into natural gas, or diesel. Coal can also help the whole downstream hydrocarbon industry too. Clean coal technologies are already applied in the field. Pakistan can be major beneficiary of its coal reserves.
God has blessed Pakistan with unlimited solar energy. There are areas in Pakistan, where the Sun shine duration is above 300 days in a year, and upto 18 hours of Sun shine on daily basis. This unique potential may be exploited for green and clean energy. Wind is also one of our strength.
What do we need? An enabling policy from Government of Pakistan. The policy may be focused to attract local entrepreneurs based on incentives. Sustainable and long term incentives, and protection may be the priority of Government. Our private sector possess the potential of rapid growth. It may include International market too. But the indigenous know-how and domestic investment may be given priority.
If PTI government can deliver something like this, their next elections are guaranteed to win. As per my perception, Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan has vision, has will and sincere with the nation, based on our understanding, we expect he will take serious notice of things and include power sector in its priority too.
