Energy crises

The growing menace of electricity and gas load shedding, combined with constantly rising electricity & gas tariffs has mushroomed into a grave national crisis. It has not only been affecting the trade and industry, development and construction, education and administration gravely, but has also seriously impeded the progress of the whole national life. In spite of higher authorities’ claims of narrowing the gap between energy demand and supply, the ground situation is showing a discouraging picture. The power short fall has crossed the 5000 figure. Unless immediate remedial masseurs are lunched on footing, Pakistan would lead to even deeper crisis.

Causes of energy short fall:

few of the basic causes of energy short fall are under

1- failure of the last regime to increase electricity: The basic cause of energy short in Pakistan is the failure of last military regime to increase the supply of electricity to keep pace with the growing demands. While the installed capacity had increased by 53 % from 1994-99 from 11,320 MW to 17,400 MW; it increase only by 12 % between 1999 to 2008, to 19420 MW
.
2- Under utilization of the existing generating capacity: secondly, an equally serious cause is the under utilization of the existing generating capacity. The availability of hydel electricity goes down in winter by 60 %, but unfortunately, the actual generation of electricity from thermal plants has also declined sharply, thus rising demand and supply gap to around 5000 MW.

3- Circular debts: One of the main reason in the serious short fall of thermal electricity is the problem of “circular debits”. In 2007, the government did not compensate the power companies for the subsidy that was being provided to the consumers. The power companies in turn could not pay the oil and gas companies, reducing their liquidity to import the furnace oil that was needed to generate electricity.
This problem has not only continued, but presently it has turned grave crises. Presently, the power companies in debt of about 100 billion rupees to the oil and gas companies. Therefore oil and gas companies provide insufficient oil and gas to the power companies that has resulted in energy short fall.

4.The repeated cutting down in Public Sector Development Program: At the present, according to Planning Commission Report, the government has conceded playing a key role in prolonging economic recession in the country by repeatedly cutting down the Public Sector development Program (PSDP) that resulted in energy and water shortage in the country. The Report states that Rs.208 billions were approved for Diamer Basha dam by the National Economic Council (NEC), the government reduced it by 100 billion rupees. The government has delayed the exploration of the Thar Coal Project, inspite of the repeated demands for funds allocation for the said project by Samar Mubarak Mand. Many other new projects regarding energy production are suffering from haltage. All these have resulted in intensifying the present energy crisis. In the country.

5 Other factors:
Some other chronic factors that contribute to the present energy crisis are as under;

(i) Line loss: very heavily line loss in the transmission and distribution because of old and poorly managed transmission system. The line loss in Pakistan is about 20 %
as compared to 8 to 10 % in other countries.

(ii) Large scale of theft of electricity: there is a large scale of that of electricity as clearly revealed by the growing difference between units generated or purchased and those paid for.
(iii) Wastage of energy by industrial sector: there is a huge wastage of energy by industry which consumes 30 % of the total electricity due to the less efficient system and other practices.

(iv) Over use of energy by transport sector: transport sector consume 28 % of the total energy. This over use of energy is due to the old and poorly tuned engines.

(v) Domestic wastage: Domestic wastage is about 45 % of the total electricity. Here too, there is a wistful and unnecessarily use of lights, air conditioners and large scale illumination on different occasions.

(vi) General wastage: excessive use of electricity in government offices, roads and park illumination have also contributed to the worsening energy crunch.

(vii) Corruption and lack of political will in the concerned energy department: have also helped the energy short fall to rise to such a disturbing heights.

(B) Effects of energy crunch:

1) Routine life: Badly affected the routine life in Pakistan 8-10 hours laodshedding in cities, 12- 18 hours in rural areas. Affected seriously the domestic life, offices, hospitals and education.

2) Industries: Many industrial units have closed and many shifted their installation to Bangladesh. This poor industrial production has ultimately affected the GDP of Pakistan. Downsizing of the workers in industries. Many workers turned jobless. The buying capacity of people has reduced sharply.

→ Rise in the price of commodities.

3) Market: Markets are closed early due to the load shedding. Secondly production cost of commodities have raised.

4) Agriculture: the agricultural land that is dependent on tube well and dug wells, its yielding capacity has sharply reduced due to load shedding. As crops do not get water in time.


5) Strikes and agitation: Due to load shedding many strikes have occurred across the country, destroyed government installations.

6) Low National growth: load shedding has affected the national growth badly. Less progress or no progress at all in all walks of the country. Ultimately, less GDP growth rate.

(C) Measures:
Three kinds of measures should be taken;

1) immediate measures: Firstly, the problem of circular debt should be solved on proiority basis, in order to enable the power companies to clear their debts. Secondly, the agreement of importing electricity from Iron and Tajikistan needs to be implemented in a quick fashion. The Pak- Iron gas pipe line project needs to be completed on the earliest dates.

2) Mid term plan: First, all the gas and inefficient WAPDA plants should be replaced by more efficient and combined cycle plants. Second, there is an urgent need of modernizing the overloaded transmission and distribution system. The expenditure of updating our electricity system could be recovered in only three years through savings from the line loss.


3) Long term plans:


(i) Dams construction:
the longer term solution of energy crisis will be to restore the hydro thermal mix to 60:40 or at least 50:50 in the coming five years. According to world report Pak can create above 50000 MW through water. The previous wapda chief said that Pak could produce 100000 MW from water. There is a need of building kalabagh dam of 4500 MW capacity, Basha dam 4200 MW, Neelum Jehlum 996 MW, extension of Tarbella dam 960 MW, Suki Kinari 840 MW, Munda 700 MW etc. Need of foreign investment for this institution like World Bank, A. B. bank etc. are needed to be attracted to invest in this project.

(ii) Gas exploration:
Licenses should be issued to foreign and local exploration companies. As there is a high untapped gas capacity in Pak. On 18th of June a wale near Mianwali, Punjab started gas. It is considered to be the large wale in the subcontinent. There new wale in Karak, one in Sindh and one in Sui discovered. Such more Wales are needed to be explored to meet out the energy needs of the country.

iii) Coal:
Pak has the second largest coal deposits in the world i.e. 185 billion metric tons, most of it is in “Thar”, Sindh. The initiative being taken by government to facilitate Dr. summer Mubarak Mand’s step of gasification and then turning this coal into electrical energy, must be implemented on larger scale, once his first experiment is succeeded. “we can produce 50 thousands MW electricity from Thar coal for the coming 200 years”. (Sammer Mubarak Mand)


vi) Wind energy:
Pakistan is blessed with a 1000 kilometer long coast and touring mountains of Himalayas, which provide excellent source for wind energy. The Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) needs to plant wind turbines in these areas. More projects on the model of Wind Mill, Jhimpir, Sindh, that produces 50 MW electricity, are required to be planted in Pakistan.

v) Solar Energy:
Pakistan gets abundance of sunshine throughout the year. Around 1800 KW/h per square meter can be produced annually through sunshine.
iv) Peace and Security in the Country:
Peace and security is necessary for implementing all the plans about the generation of power resources in Pakistan.

Conclusion:
God has blessed Pakistan with variety of energy resources and those also in abundance. There is a need of proper planning and political will to take out these. It is high time to formulate such polices that could bridge the gap between the demand and supply of energy in the country. Once a proper policy is formulated and steps were taken with nationalistic zeal, than we would not only have enough energy to be utilized domestically but we would be among its exporter.