Sustainable Energy

 

“Sustainable Energy for all” is an initiative taken by the Secretary General of UN Ban Ki-Moon. He describes energy in these words: ““Energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, increased social equity, and an environment that allows the world to thrive.”

The objectives of this initiative are three fold and the timeline to achieve these objectives is 2030. The First objective is about universal access to modern energy services. The second is about energy efficiency and the third is about the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. The last two objectives are about doubling both the levels of efficiency and the utilization of renewable energy by 2030.

Energy is very important in the modern world as it is the gateway to everything modern and progressive. In Pakistan we understand better than anyone else that what it means to be without access to energy and how it would affect the studies of children, the livelihood of the youth and the quality of life of the elderly.

Energy access is a one of the great divides of the modern times and as noted by the website of this initiative “Nearly one person in five on the planet still lacks access to electricity. More than twice that number, almost three billion people, rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste for cooking and heating. This is a major barrier to eradicating poverty and building shared prosperity.”

The situation in Pakistan is no different where, as per some estimates almost more than 40% of the population has no access to the grid. In other words, these people are without access to the modern way of living and the basic amenities of life. Their children are denied any up word mobility by default and their economic plight is set in stone with no sign of any change in the foreseeable future.  As per the World Bank, per capita utilization of electricity in Pakistan is almost 450 Kwh, or in lay man’s language 450 units of electricity. How we compare to others? Indonesia is almost double this value and Malaysia is more than nine times our usage per capita of power. India is more than a billion people of population with much larger geographical distribution; its electric consumption is above 680 units per capita.

The other aspect of problem is that where we are providing power, most of it is generated through Thermal sources. Almost 68% is produced by burning the fossil fuels and out of this 35% is from oil. The share of hydro power in this mix is almost 30% and other renewables, including Wind and Solar is almost nil.  Though the share of other renewables is more than nil, but for percentage please use your calculators to find out what 106 MW of Wind Power would stand for as against approximately 23000 MW.

The energy security of our country can be reflected by the fact that the imported source of energy is almost 30% of the total energy requirements in the form of imported fuels like furnace oil and diesel.

As per the final report of Pakistan Integrated Energy Model by “IRG” sponsored by Asian Development Bank the conclusions based on scenario based projections include that to sustain economic growth corresponding to 5.6% average GDP by 2030, Pakistan would require a fourfold increase in electricity generation, which corresponds to approximately 82,000 MW of new capacity additions. It would require a threefold increase in consumption of high value petroleum products. The report concluded that if the government does not act quickly, it will be difficult to avert a looming Energy Security crisis.

By 2030 the outlook as per the report is that our proven conventional natural gas reserves will be depleted and energy imports would jump from 27% to over 45% of the total supply of energy.

With this outlook obviously the objective of providing energy access to everyone becomes a daunting task. The other two objectives are not easier either.

As they say, if there is a will there is a way. Renewable energy can come to our rescue and increasing the share of renewables can help us achieve the goal of energy access to all. The potential of renewable energy in Pakistan is enormous. According to a study, Pakistan has identified cumulative potential to generate 3.2 million MW of renewable energy from resources including: 340,000 MW from wind, 2.9 million MW from solar, 50,000 MW from hydro (large), 3,100 MW from hydro (small),1,800 MW from biogases cogeneration and 500 MW from waste.

There has been a view from some quarters that the renewable resources like Wind and Solar are expensive and thus they are not good enough to be utilized in poor countries like Pakistan. However, without going into the technicalities of the issue, this is not a correct idea. The cost of power produced from many thermal power plants is more expensive than the renewable resources like Wind and Solar. Globally these technologies are becoming pervasive and currently global installed wind capacity has exceeded 300,000MW and Solar has exceeded 100,000MW. According to a report since the year 2000, more than 70% of the growth in the electricity generation from renewable resources came from non-OECD countries.

Hydropower is cheaper than all these resources and enhancing the Hydropower capacity is an important aspect of the future energy mix of our country, however excessively relying on the run of the river generation is not without its risks. Most important of these is the risk of availability of water, or the hydro risk.  At the government level the Hydropower projects that come with a reservoir base must be given a priority. But the utilization of Wind and Solar for cleaner energy at an affordable price cannot be ruled out. These renewable resources have capital costs, but almost no hidden costs like the environmental costs associated with thermal plants in the form of pollution and displacement costs in the case of Dams.   

Power produced by any IPP or Genco, may those be thermal or renewable will go as far as the grid. However vast expanse of our people is not served by the grid. To improve the accessibility for such areas solar appears to be the priority number one. Solar as a resource is widely available all across the country and must be tapped with the help of “off-grid” and “grid tied” power generation for residential household, basic amenities like dispensaries, schools and hospitals.  We will talk a bit more about these boring terms “off-grid” and “grid tied” later in this article.

If we have to prioritize our work we need to look at the picture as it would emerge with respect to the requirement of energy in the future. Currently residential load is almost 46% of the total power consumption in our country. As we look into the future, it is predicted that the residential energy use will double, and it will continue to be the second largest component of final energy use in 2030.

Without going into the nitty gritty of the usage of energy in the future, it can be pointed out that by 2030 the growth in the residential sector energy consumption will be driven by utilization of air conditioning, cooking  and water heating. On the other hand rural household energy will grow by only 30% and is dominated by the demand for cooking.

In this scenario a less thrilling and till now a much less glamorous way to harness the energy of the Sun can be utilized; the Solar Thermal panels.  These are basically collectors of the Solar energy in the form of heat. These are successfully used when we require capturing heat. There are 4 major types and inquisitive readers can easily google the types.  Any of these thermal panels are more efficient (60 to 80%) and cheaper than the famous and more known Solar panels, which are technically called PV panels and collect the solar energy in the form of light. Efficiency is also gained by not having to transform the light energy to electrical energy. Many of these collectors even work on cloudy days and in cold wind and weather. These systems cost less and their return is far better thus the payback is more favorable. Utilizing these thermal panels can help us reduce the load in the areas where our residential consumers utilize the energy the most, i.e water heating, home cooling and heating, etc. we have already discussed above that the largest requirement of energy in residential sector which is our second largest energy consuming sector pertains to these aspects.

To help achieve the objectives of “Sustainable Energy for All”, another important area is “grid-tied” solar system, which is the most common method of installing a residential solar power system. Grid-tied systems are connected to the main power grid and are designed to sell power back to the utility company. In an arrangement known as “net metering”, residential consumers get paid for the electricity they generate in excess of what they use. Residential consumers often not only completely eliminate their electric utility bill, but they may actually realize a net profit.

The third area of importance is the off-grid power systems. These are useful in providing access to power to those who are not connected to the grid. These are small solar based systems that generate power for lighting and some other essential requirements.

At a national level we need to discuss the detailed aspects of the above mentioned solutions in a framework suitable to Pakistan’s context. We will deal with these in more detail in some other time. However it is clear that providing sustainable energy to everyone is a huge undertaking and will only be achievable if all the stakeholders, i.e government, consumers and businesses join hand together. Only then we can see better economic equality and growth for everyone. With concerted efforts in the right direction we will be able to achieve a bright future (without power outages).

 

 

(The writer is the CEO of a power project and can be reached at kashifmateenansari@post.harvard.edu)