World needs to move towards renewable energy

Islamabad

Rebecca Bertam from Henrich Boll Stiftung, Germany, has said that the world needed to move towards renewable energy prices of which were dramatically reduced due to the Paris Agreement.

Ms Rebecca was speaking on the first day of 19th Sustainable Development Conference on ‘Sustainable development: envisaging the future together’ organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute here on Tuesday.

Ms Rebecca said that wind and solar energy have become as competitive with other forms of energy throughout the world, while the prices of geothermal and bioenergy have risen even further as they are not as efficient.

Zeeshan Ishfaq from World Wind Energy Association said that the country had wasted a lot of potential in producing solar energy and wind energy. He gave the example of the Chitral District project initiated by the Aga Khan Foundation with the help of local community. He mentioned certain barriers for the community in power development.

Federal Minister for Power and Energy Musadiq Malik said that we have three principles, empowerment of life and livelihoods, equity and some kind of justice for the poor. We have empowerment but not equity. We have tried to create an energy that would allow us to achieve these objectives. He said that Pakistan started LNG plants in order to bring clean energy into the local energy mix and now have two billion cubic feet of gas energy. The third component in our portfolio is coal, he said, adding that we reverted to coal because we had to introduce a cost cutting energy mix for the poor.

UN Resident Coordinator Neil Buhne said that one of repercussions of lacking the monitoring data leads to the continuation of bad programmes. He said that the biggest issue with respect to data is quality of data along with its open access.

Dr Peter Taylor of International Development Research Centre, Canada, said that all SDGs are inter-linked. He observed that the use of data by the policymakers is also a point of concern. The issue of reliability and acceptability is challenge to be used.

Dr Mahbub Elahi Chowdhury of Health Systems and Population Studies Division, Dhaka, Bangladesh, said that in order to maximise the acceptance of data by the policymakers there is a need to institutionalise the data collected by the private sector.

Mome Saleem of HBS said that Pakistan is a virgin market and we should learn from other countries and derive some lessons. Dr Rajendra Kumar of Nepal Public Health Foundation said Nepal lags behind achieving SDGs since a lot of efforts as well as budget is spent on tackling the natural disasters. Addressing the issue of data reliability and its acceptance by the government organisations, he said that data collection organisations should develop the sense of ownership among the policymakers by involving them in the process from the very beginning.

Dr Sajjad Akhtar of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics said that there is a weak linkage between policy and data use that is required to be addressed. He stressed the need for centralisation as Pakistan is dealing with multiple sources and by different provinces that have different timelines and frequency regarding data collection.

Dr Tanay Sidki Uyar from Turkey stressed the identification of resources available, technological improvement, and fossil fuel usage in order to have the cheapest option of renewable energy solutions.

Zeeshan Ishfaq said that the country has a lot of wasted potential in producing solar and wind energy. He gave the example of Chitral district project initiated by the Aga Khan Foundation with the help of the local community.

Tao Wang from the Chinese Business Research Institute stressed the need to increase the percentage of renewable energy being produced and Pakistan could learn lessons from China in governance.