DURING a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi,a German company delegation expressed its interest to install nature-friendly waste-to-energy power plant projects in the province.
According to details, the German company will invest billions of rupees in the project that will also generate employment opportunities for some five thousand people.
For decades, Germany has been the global pioneer in applying renewable energy and environmental technologies.
Renewable energy accounted for 49% of German power consumption in the first half of 2022, up six percentage points from a year earlier.
In a bid to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and reach climate targets, the European country has also recently approved a plan which envisages a new target of 80% renewables power by 2030.
In this backdrop, the German investment in waste to energy project in Punjab is welcoming and the provincial government should fully facilitate the German company for the early completion of the project which will not only help us produce clean energy and efficiently dispose of the waste but also help reduce our dependence on the expensive imported fuel which is eating up our foreign exchange reserves.
A couple of years back, Pakistan was generating about twenty million tons of solid waste a year which had been increasing more than two percent annually.
Only the city of Karachi generates more than 16,500 tons of municipal waste daily. Hence, there is a great potential of generating electricity from this source and by fully utilizing it we can ensure inexpensive, secure and reliable baseload power.
Our authorities should engage with Germany and other European countries which have expertise in this field for installation of waste to energy projects in other big cities, especially Karachi.
Unnecessary hurdles in the way of investment should be done away with to encourage these companies to install the clean energy projects in Pakistan.
As the energy produced from imported fuel is expensive and going beyond the reach of common man, the government will have to think seriously on exploiting the indigenous resources for power generation.
With the help of China, we can also exploit the vast potential in solar and wind energy.
