by Azhar Bukhari
Opportunities are in abundance
Pakistan only needs a committed push to set right foot for a sparkling era
Pakistan has recently indicated its commitment to renewable energy sources, but realising these in practice could still be a long way off.
The country is blessed with an abundance of renewable energy potential, but so far this remains unharnessed except for a few large hydroelectric projects.
The country, historically an energy importer, is facing serious energy shortages while global fossil fuel prices continue their upward spiral. The effects on the economy are marked: interruptions in energy supply to industry, for instance, have hit the country's exports hard.
Experts are of the view that Pakistan needs to initiate a transition towards greater use of renewable energy as an indigenous, clean and abundant resource.
But the government drive for renewables has its critics. The problem, says an energy expert, is that the alternative energy initiatives have been offered at a stage when the damage has already been done to the economy.
"The gap between demand and supply of power has been allowed to grow by not addressing the interrupted supply to the domestic and agriculture sector as much as the industrial sector," he said. As a result, the cost of energy and energy production has already made Pakistan's products uncompetitive compared with those of India.
He suggested that all the country's power plants should be coal-fired, and all industries that need fuel for heating purposes, such as cement factories, should use coal, a suggestion he justifies on the basis of the huge reserves of coal in the provinces of Sindh and Punjab. The coal reserves’ quality is good and it can be a better substitute than high-priced oil imports.
Ali Zulqarnain, an engineering professor and alternative energy researcher at NED University of Engineering & Technology in Karachi, writes in an article, "There are areas in and around Karachi suitable for installing both solar and wind energy plants to produce cheap electricity. Many science activists also advocate the use of hydropower, since Pakistan is a water-abundant country.”
Interestingly, despite having the world's best water resources, the production of hydropower has been sidelined by the government. If the government had properly exploited hydropower, the country could now be enjoying a 5,000 megawatt power supply from the Kunhar-Neelum-Jhelum river system in Azad, Kashmir, as hydropower projects could also reduce the cost of electricity.
It is worth to mention here that, in 2001, the Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan identified 22 sites for launching hydropower projects to meet the ever-increasing demand for cheap power. It indicated that about 15,074 megawatts could be generated on the completion of these projects, which would also meet the water irrigation requirements for the growing agriculture sector.
In terms of social equity, renewable energy could also raise Pakistan's present low per-capita consumption of energy and improve access to modern energy supplies, helping to alleviate poverty and reduce the burden on rural women, who collect biomass for fuel.
In the future, Pakistan may adopt other technologies for generating power from renewable energy sources, such as municipal waste and landfill methane geothermal recovery, anaerobic biomass gasification, biological fuels, fuel cells and ocean waves.
Currently, Pakistan is witnessing a serious power crisis due to the depletion of conventional sources of energy. Experts believe that global warming and deteriorating environmental conditions are adversely affecting Pakistan’s water resources. The rivers are dying out at a slow but steady pace and with them, Pakistan’s chances of producing cheap hydropower are diminishing as well.
Although huge coal reserves that can be used for power generation and for resolving the prevalent power crisis have been discovered lately in Sindh, but mining these resources requires immense amounts of investment. Moreover, this is by no means an environment-friendly solution to the problem.
The most appropriate answer, according to some experts, is exploring renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar and even tidal energy. These not only have huge power-generation potential, but are also extremely environment-friendly and are successfully being used for electricity-generation in various countries of the world.
Unfortunately, not much research is being carried out in Pakistan for utilizing renewable sources of energy for power production. This is despite the fact that an Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB) exists in the country. The purpose of this board is to raise awareness about renewable energy sources and to promote them in the country.
According to some other experts, the total solar energy available to the earth is approximately 3,850 ZetaJoules (ZJ) per year while the worldwide energy consumption was 0.571 ZJ in 2005.
Another area with respect to renewable energy resources is the exploration of wind power, the conversion of wind energy into electricity, using wind turbines. By the end of 2008, the worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was 95.9 GigaWatts (GW).
Currently, wind produces just over one percent of worldwide electricity use, and accounts for approximately 19 percent of electricity production in Denmark, nine percent in Spain and Portugal, and six percent in Germany and the Republic of Ireland. Pakistan however, lags behind in this area as well, despite the fact that in neighbouring countries, such as India and China, the potential of wind power is successfully being used for electricity generation, albeit at a small scale. More importantly, extensive research is being carried out in this area in these countries.
Another area which needs the immediate attention of local authorities concerned is tidal power, also known as tidal energy. This is a form of hydropower that exploits the movement of water caused by tidal currents or the rise and fall in sea levels due to the tides.
Tidal power is yet to be widely used anywhere in the world, but it also has the potential for future electricity generation. Experts even believe that it is more profitable than wind energy and solar power.
In Pakistan, which has been gifted with over 700 kilometers of coastline, tidal power can prove to be a solution to the perpetual power crisis. In order to do that, however, authorities concerned will have to change their mindset and attitude towards emerging as well as environmental-friendly technologies.
Interestingly, at a time when extensive research is being carried out around the globe for finding cheap sources of energy, many people in Pakistan have not even heard of unconventional technologies being used elsewhere in the world. These include geothermal power, which also has the potential to contribute towards eliminating the persisting power crisis in the country.
Geothermal power is energy generated by heat stored under the Earth’s surface or the collection of absorbed heat in the atmosphere and oceans.
Similarly, biofuels, biomass and wave power are some other potential energy sources which need to be explored by authorities concerned, researchers, and investors, in order to provide electricity to far-flung and remote areas of the country, as well as to meet the growing demand of electricity for industrialization and agriculture.
Most importantly, thousands of tonnes of domestic waste produced daily produced in the country is poorly managed and is dumped without keeping in view its effects on the local environment. This waste can also be used for electricity production by using waste heat electricity generation technology. Even though this method would not be as environment-friendly as renewable energy sources, but it can help diminish the gap in demand and supply of the electricity to Pakistan.
