AS before, the coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is focusing its attention on addressing challenges facing the energy sector of the country. While chairing a meeting on renewable energy on Monday, the Prime Minister issued directives for speedy completion of solar and wind energy projects as these would produce low-cost and environment friendly electricity.
Energy security is crucial for socio-economic development of the country and it was because of this that the previous PML(N) Government devoted single-minded attention to increasing generation capacity. Its policies including finalization of the epoch-making China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative put the country close to self-sufficiency in power. However, circular debt, the dilapidated transmission and distribution networks and rampant theft/leakages have denied due benefit of the increased generation to consumers as the country is still facing hours of load-shedding mainly because it has no money to import fuel.
As the financial position of the country is unlikely to improve satisfactorily in the short and medium term, the Government is rightly focusing on wind and solar projects as these would help bring down the high tariff and address the compounding issue of circular debt. While emphatically stating that while work on solar projects of 10,000 MW was continuing at a fast pace, the Prime Minister asked relevant institutions to immediately prepare a strategy for benefiting from the available solar and wind resources. Apart from this, wind power projects of 6,000 MW are also being considered and addition of 16,000 MW of low-cost electricity would surely ease the existing situation but it all depends on continuing commitment, speedy implementation and ensuring highest standards of the projects.
