Ailing energy sector – I
The news coverage “Power sector suffered from inefficiencies: WB expert” (BR Dec 13), confirming that power sector inefficiencies that cost the economy US$ 18 billion in 2015 really touches the visible peak of the iceberg!
The power sector “distortions” are deliberate and criminal and must be recognized as such. We have not developed our hydel power potential since the 90’s and the unfortunate 1200 MW Power Project in Baluchistan (which the World Bank must own and Asian Development Bank did not want to touch even with a mile-long pole)) showed the way how easy it was for unscrupulous “investors” to increase the original estimate of US$ 720 million to over US$ 1.8 billion. This was the “flood-gate opening” and since then we have been “flooded” with expensive and inefficient thermal power plants and with total lack of energy conservation measures, which has resulted in out-of-control trillion Rupee “energy circular debt” eating into our very economic survival. Recently completed power plants are also not based on the essential requirement of high efficiencies (specially in peak summers when we need the most power) and affordable fuel (not imported at high costs), knowing well that fuel costs could easily be 85 percent of total cost of power. Even solar energy, which should have been the most economical energy source, has been totally neglected in a country where large areas have been blessed with more than 3,000 hours of solar irradiation annually! The corrupt “experts” have ensured total failure of the only one “solar park”, producing only a fraction of the power at very high tariff and that too for only a few hours in a day.
In a country of 220 million people where energy conservation is abhorred at all levels and energy theft is “socially acceptable”, we can never meet the energy demand if we do not change our ways.
Other than theft elimination, which should be met with stern action, following two sectors can solve our basic “ailing energy” issues:
1. Natural gas wastage: Our natural gas usage, especially in large commercial and industrial sectors, is very inefficient and in-spite of agreement to use gas efficiently (using waste heat in cogeneration mode), neither the huge number of customers nor the Gas Company (SSGC/SNGPL) really care which has resulted in serious gas shortages. Our experience, spread over the last 30 years, has shown the efficacy of this design and yet, we simply do not care to conserve. Use of our precious gas in engines of cars and vans/buses not designed for natural gas fuel is enormous wastage and yet this has become a political issue! Our precious gas must only be used efficiently and that is possible only in equipment designed for gas fuel.
Karachi Ainul Abidin
