Flip-flop on coal

The government’s policy of coal-based power generation – 6,600MW at Gadani and another over 7,000MW in Punjab – had raised hopes among the people that in the near future we will overcome our persistent loadshedding problem to a great extent. Now it seems the policy has faltered because of the lack of financial support, the import and transportation cost of coal and environmental issues.
At the outset various quarters had suggested we use our abundant coal reserves in Thar. The Chinese during the Musharraf regime and later Dr Samar Mubarakmand had demonstrated the viability of this coal for the production of electricity. Regarding the environmental impact, 60 to 80 percent of the electricity production in India, the US, China and South Africa is based on coal. Why is an energy-starved nation like ours so worried about the environmental aspect? It is being said that we now want to run our power plants on imported LNG and be at the mercy of LNG exporting countries. Are the petroleum mafia and other elements, who in the past have obstructed all efforts to exploit our cheap hydropower resources and other alternate power generation potential, at play again? It would be unfortunate if our government failed to exploit the Thar coal reserves for the generation of comparatively cheap electricity. With such flip-flop government policies, we can never even dream of getting rid of the monster of loadshedding.
Air-Cdre (r) Mohammad Yaqoob Khan
Rawalpindi