Research on producing energy from indigenous resources stressed

LAHORE

Speakers at a conference have laid stress on research on producing clean energy from indigenous resources.

The one-day conference was organised by Government College University, Lahore,  Electrical Engineering Department on "Future Prospects of Clean Energy in Pakistan.'

Noted industrialists and energy experts presented different views about the challenges faced by Pakistan and other developing countries in going green for their energy requirements, according to a press release issued here on Wednesday.

Engr Almas Haider, the former member Engineering Development Board and NTDC, said energy security should be Pakistan’s priority instead of just clean energy. “We should prefer generating energy from our available resources whether it's coal, wind or solar instead of relying on imports,” he said.  

Engr Haider, who developed the ‘Engineering Vision 2012 for Pakistan’, said that Pakistan had been importing about $14b oil and gas every year which was the root cause of all foreign loan. He said that in case of war, Pakistan could face severe energy crisis.

He said the previous governments in Pakistan had only added oil power generation projects, and even power generation plants had been installed away from the power consumption centres without any planning. However, he said that things were improving now and future would be certainly better.

Engr Haider said that Pakistan had huge potential for coal power production, and now technology for producing power from all kinds of coal was available. He said that the countries across the world had been producing power even from least efficient coal.

However, Pakistan Engineering Council Chairman Engr Jawed Salim Qureshi believed that Pakistan was moving in opposite direction from the world in energy sector, where smart grids were getting popular with energy source on the rooftop of very house or building causing no line losses of billions of rupees and transportation cost. “Use the energy you want, and send the excess to the national grid via smart meters. This is what the world is planning or doing,” he said.

Engr Qureshi also said that the sustainable energy solution for Pakistan was only in solar, wind and hydropower mix. “We don’t need energy from any other source in the long term,” he said, laying a stress on the government to build national consensus on all dams, including Kalabagh.  

The PEC chairman said that engineers were the only community in Pakistan who didn’t yet get service structure. He said that there were 50,000 jobless engineers in Pakistan, and demanded the government announce national internship programme for the engineers. 

Engr Qureshi said that PEC had made it mandatory for all CPEC projects to appoint 70 percent of the engineers from Pakistan. “And, I assure, we will get this clause implemented,” he said. 

Talking about accreditation process for universities’ engineering programmes, the PEC chairman said that it was very unfortunate for Pakistan that education had developed as one of the most profitable businesses in the country, and there were very few private institutions which were working truly for the promotion of education. 

Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Hassan Amir Shah said GCU was deliberating on going solar and would soon initiate a pilot project. He said that GCU electrical engineering programme was relatively new, but the first few batches of graduates had done very well in the market.  Dr Nouman Zafar, associate professor of LUMS, said the energy production was not the only challenge for Pakistan. He also laid stress on using advanced technologies for real time load management and controlling power theft. He said that solar smart grids could only become successful in Pakistan if a group of consumers was integrated into a micro-smart grid at the community level which would reduce per consumer cost as well. 

GCU Electrical Engineering Chairman Dr Juniad Zafar said the electrical power distribution network in Pakistan was a complex system with many geographical regions suffering from blackout, limited and intermittent supply. He said that investment in mega-scale solar energy generation projects could help mitigate the supply-related problems and counterbalance the country’s growing dependence on imported oil.  

GCU Faculty of Engineering Dean Prof Dr Raiz Ahmad, Dr Syed Aun Abbas, Engr Suleman Najeeb, Engr Shahid Hussain and Dr Hassa J Zaidi also addressed the seminar on the topics of rural grid evolution, challenges for hydropower generation and wind as renewable energy source.