Pakistan contributes little to greenhouse gas emission and global climate change. Its total energy-related carbon dioxide emission, measure about 100 million tons, out of which, 46 percent is from oil-related emissions, 45 percent from gas and 9 percent from coal, an Asian Development Bank Study report said.
On a per-capita basis, this is equal to 0.7 tons, compared with an average of 25 tons for the USA, Australia, and Canada; 11 tons for European Union (EU) countries and 2.1 tons for developing countries on average, it added. Overall, the ADB report mentioned that the Pakistan has made little progress towards achieving energy conservation and energy efficiency (measured by the number of GDP units produced using energy) even when compared with other South Asian countries.
Energy efficiency and conservation cannot only reduce large financial outlays required to develop additional energy supplies in future, but can help minimise uneconomical excess standby capacity required to cater to peak loads, reduce subsidy and defer transmission system expansion needs, thereby saving public funds and increasing returns on energy infrastructure investments.
In recent years, the ADB report highlighted that Pakistans rising consumption of oil, its flat oil production (close to 65,000 bbl/day), primarily from Southern Indus Basin, has led to increased levels of oil imports. A country with limited refining capacity is heavily dependent on petroleum product imports. Pakistan consumes close to 370,000bbl/day of oil and various petroleum products, of which nearly 80percent, is imported.
Majority of the imports is from Middle East, with Saudi Arabia as the leading oil importing destination for Pakistan. Due to the large-scale fuel switching in the power and cement industry, displaced by natural gas and coal, respectively and with increased use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in vehicles, oil consumption to an extent has levelled off temporarily.
According to the ADB report, Natural Gas presently accounts for the largest share of Pakistans energy use, amounting to about 50percent of total energy consumption. Pakistan currently consumes all the domestic natural gas it produces.
Over the period of past six years, natural gas consumption in the country has risen by an average annual rate of 10.4percent, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by 17.6 percent and coal by 22.8 percent. Despite a slight increase in production recently, Pakistan, with its growing level of consumption, will need to become an importer of natural gas in the next three to five years, provided no major discoveries are executed, it mentioned.
Consequently, Pakistan is currently exploring several pipeline options (Iran-Pakistan-India, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) and the import of LNG from Qatar, to meet the expected growth in demand for natural gas, the study added.
Coal plays a minor role in countrys energy mix, although Pakistan sits on one of the largest coal reserves estimated at 185 billion tons in Thar in Southern Pakistan. Pakistans demand for electricity is also rising rapidly, close to 12 percent on the average.
Its installed capacity is about 20,000 megawatts (MW). Conventional thermal plants using oil, natural gas, and coal account for about 66 percent of this capacity, with hydroelectricity making up 32 percent and nuclear 2 percent, it revealed.
In 2006, electricity generation stood at 93.6 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). However, the Government estimates that this will need to increase to 120 billion kWh by 2010 to meet the increase in demand. Further, Pakistan faces power shortages during peak seasons and peak hours of use, making it necessary to implement rotating blackouts (load-shedding), the ADB report said.
Additionally, many rural areas do not even have access to electricity, while half the population is not connected to the national grid. Technical and commercial losses caused by poor infrastructure and a significant amount of power theft represent 30 percent of the total generated electric power, ADB report disclosed.
Pakistan as an energy intensive, is a net importer of energy and also lags behind other countries in converting high-value primary energy (gas and oil) into useful energy services. It takes, for example, almost 5.0 times much primary energy to produce one unit of GDP than Bangladesh, 3.4 times than Nepal, and 2.3 times than Sri Lanka.
Compared with India, which is a coal-based economy and faces technical problem in efficient conversion of primary energy from coal into energy services, Pakistan remains 33 percent more inefficient in converting its primary energy sources into useful energy services, the ADB report concluded.
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