Energy officials, civil society discuss clean energy

KARACHI: Sindh energy officials and civil society leaders discussed the challenges and opportunities of the Thar coal project and the need for clean energy in Pakistan at a dialogue on Thursday.

The speakers stressed the need to protect the rights of local people and to conduct a fresh environmental impact assessment of the coal mining and power plants in Thar, using state-of-the-art technology to minimize pollution.

They also welcomed the establishment of the Sindh Electric Power Regulatory Authority (SEPRA), which they said reflects Sindh’s leadership role in ensuring energy security and climate security for Pakistan.

The dialogue was organized by The Knowledge Forum (TKF), a think tank, and featured a presentation by Abu Bakar Madani, secretary of the energy department of the Sindh government, on “Sindh’s Energy Landscape: Challenges and Opportunities”.

Madani said that Pakistan needs to produce affordable electricity, as the current reliance on furnace oil and hydel sources has made power generation costly and unreliable.

He said that Sindh is adding over 1,800 megawatts (MW) of electricity to the national grid from various sources, including coal, solar and wind, but renewable energy is not dependable due to weather conditions.

“We need to have at least one baseload for an uninterrupted supply of power,” he said, adding that India has made coal its baseload and is producing 70 percent of its energy from coal.

He said that Pakistan has started using locally produced coal from Thar due to the foreign exchange crisis, and that Karachi Electric Company (KE) is planning to shift from furnace oil to Thar coal. A railway track is being laid from Tharparkar to Bin Qasim for this purpose.

“All environmental concerns should be addressed while generating power via coal,” he said, adding that if the federal government reduces taxes on solar panels and quality panels are produced locally, the cost of solar energy would be reduced significantly.