Loud Thinking June 29, 2013 at 11:21AM

Way Out of Pakistan’s Energy Crisis by Mr. Ishfaq A. Sheikh, Ex. Senior Information Analyst (Pakistan & World Bank).

The PM should order to devise comprehensive short, medium and long term policies by the technical experts. A committee of volunteers may be constituted to focus on short and medium term solutions to ease the loadsheding, as follows:

Short and Medium Term Solutions:

1. Enhance generation capacity of the existing production units by conducting energy audits by the energy experts for preventive maintenance and upgradation where needed.

2. Zakat money to be deducted on the Ist of Ramzan be diverted for upgradation and maintenance of non-operational units. PM to take nation into confidence to spend zakat money on this noble cause for the welfare of the society to avoid criticism

3. Control line losses, theft and recovery of outstanding bills without any discrimination.

4. Stop free electricity to wapda employees and all other sundaries.

5. Declare energy emergency in the country and ban forthwith using jackets, nickties, waste coats, etc, from top to bottom (inclusive PM) and wear light clothes during all types of official, private and other social gatherings.

6. Stop forthwith provision of official cars to ministers, all government officials and state enterprises executives. put on auction all the retrieved cars while only few vehicles shall be kept in each department in the car pool to use for official duties. The officials shall be given lump sum salary only. The money fetched from the auction shall be utilized to clear the circular debt. Such action automatically will take care of misuse and corruption.

7. Exploit and promote alternate energy resrouces to generate power from solar and wind. In this connection, I can share my experience about California. The government has installed solar panels on roof tops and the cost occurred is deducted in easy instalments thru monthly bill of consumers spreaded over a period of five years or so.

8. At the same time, foreign/local investors can be attracted to install panel manufacturing units locally to make its usage cost effective.

Long Term Solutions:

1. Set up EMI (Energy Management Institute) to produce energy managers/technicians to conduct energy audits of industrial units and official buildings to bridge the gap between demand and supply. There is a tremendous scope of saving energy and in return huge money saving to industrialists. I have done it and proved it. however, we have lack of energy auditors in the country and setting up of EMI is very important to develop human resource.

2. Speed up work on completing under construction dams including construction of Kalabagh dam which is a cheap source of power generation.

3. Set up wind turbines and make usage of bagas in cooperation with sugar mills.

4. Coal must be used for power generation, a viable long term solutions to meet the ever growing demand of energy.

Tags: My Views