Clean to expand

Today marks the annual International Day of Clean Energy. The day was declared by the UN General Assembly as a call to raise awareness and mobilise action for a just and inclusive transition to clean energy for the benefit of people and the planet. While ‘benefit of the people’ and ‘benefit of the planet’ might seem like two separate things at a surface level, they are ultimately one in the same. Without clean energy, there is no liveable planet and without a liveable planet, there is no human thriving. And while some may see the transition to clean energy as a purely environmental goal, with economic benefits being largely indirect, this is not the case. Fossil fuels have indeed taken the world quite far, but 685 million people still live without access to reliable electricity or energy today, as per the UN. At current rates, 1.8 billion people will still be using unsafe, unhealthy and inefficient cooking systems, such as burning wood or dung, by 2030. And the most recent figures show that the number of people without electricity actually increased by 10 million in 2022, as population growth outpaced progress. All of this shows that fossil fuels, instead of bringing energy and its benefits to the world, have actually left many behind.

Pakistan is no stranger to these fossil-fuel disparities. According to analysis by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Pakistan has lost 20 per cent of its forest area over the past 24 years due to growing urbanisation and the continuing reliance on wood as a source of energy. PIDE estimates that of the 27,000 hectares of forest cleared every year in the country, about half is for cooking and heating in households that lack access to gas. Urbanisation and rapid population growth leave Pakistan more exposed to climate change and its consequences. Moving to cleaner energy will not only save the environment and protect people from the disastrous effects of climate change and global warming, it also has the potential to deliver immediate economic benefits by making energy far more accessible and reliable. Part of this potential lies in how renewable energy resources are often much cheaper than traditional fossil fuels. This is something Pakistan’s bulging number of solar consumers have clearly picked up on, with the country thought to have added an estimated 17 gigawatts of solar power last year.

Pakistanis have realised that switching to renewable energy is lighter on their wallets and actually brings them more reliable power and millions are already benefiting from the switch. Such rapid transitions, while ratcheting up the pressure on the traditional grid, will be crucial to achieving the country’s aim of making renewables 60 per cent of the energy mix by 2030. This will require almost doubling our current renewable energy usage and it will take more than just a solar boom to achieve. More importantly, the government has largely been a passenger to the solar boom. Going forward, the government should now seek ways to make solar even more accessible and look for ways to make other clean sources like wind and hydro more available for the people. The almost 50 million Pakistanis who still lack adequate access to electricity and the country’s vanishing forest both depend on it.