Pakistan’s energy landscape to be based on indigenous renewable sources, says Dastgir

Federal Minister for Energy Khurram Dastgir on Thursday said Pakistan’s future energy landscape will be based upon the utilisation of indigenous renewable sources.

Addressing a ceremony in Islamabad, the federal minister said that as per his government’s energy policy, every new electricity generation plant in Pakistan will be set up using domestic sources i.e. hydel, solar, wind and Thar coal.

“If we use Thar coal responsibly and use technology, it can also be an environmentally sound solution to our energy crisis.

Thar power plant to start operations soon: Dastgir

“The fifth one is nuclear energy. Nuclear is an important part of our energy mix, and it has been termed as a renewable form of energy,” he said.

“The future energy landscape of Pakistan will be based upon these five sources,” he added, while calling for the modernisation of the country’s energy sector.

Dastgir said that the country’s power sector has become the most significant sector for the country’s financial viability and how we present our budgets in the power sector is now the principal hurdle, which we intend to change and transform into a principal facilitator of Pakistan’s economic growth.

He said that the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) call for affordable and clean energy. “Similarly, having undergone and still suffering the historic devastations of floods, we also remember SDG 13, which calls for adequate climate action to mitigate climate disasters.

“How do we do both is our challenge,” he said.

Renewable energy developers highlight concerns of RE sector

Dastgir said that the challenge could be overcome through the usage of modern technology, by replacing fossil fuel energy projects with renewable energy.

“But at the same time, we are also grappling with the challenge of energy outlook in the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has seen the prices of energy commodity becoming expensive, which is also a challenge to our foreign exchange reserves and to our finances,” said Dastgir.