Represented by Alternative Energy Development Board Chief Executive Arif Alauddin, Pakistan, together with some 100 countries across the globe, participated in the signing ceremony of the founding treaty of the International Agency for Renewable Resources (IARR) in Bonn the other day.
It will thus be noted that with its membership open to all United Nations members, it will stand out as the only international organisation in the world dedicated to promotion of renewable energy. In so far as its areas of activity are concerned, these have been stated as encompassing bio-energy, geothermal energy, hydropower, ocean and wave energy, including tidal energy and ocean thermal energy, besides solar and wind energy.
Evidently, enthused by the event, in his remarks at the end of the ceremony, Alauddin described the foundation of the world body as a big leap forward in the desired direction, understandably, hinting at the tremendous scope of exploitation of the enormous potential of the renewable energy resources. Coming in the midst of deepening energy crisis, bordering on famine, the occasion may mean some solace to the thoroughly disenchanted millions in this country.
It will, however, be worthwhile to recall that even as far back as in or around 1970s, trying to catch up with the West's initiative for harnessing bio-energy resources, considerable emphasis was laid, in this country, on cheaper and more convenient energy resources, such as biomass, and to some success, at least, in certain parts of the country.
But the Appropriate Technology Development Organisation (ATDO) which had been put in place to pursue the scheme, could not achieve much. More recently, around 2002, a Pakistani engineer made a pointed reference to geo-thermal energy, the least expensive source of renewable energy, while trying to identify what energy starved Pakistan had badly missed that long.
Unlike sunlight, wind, or tidal power, it can be used indefinitely to generate cheapest electricity, as it does not involve burning fuel or damaging the environment. As for non-renewable resources, these comprise fossil fuels, such as oil, coal, gas and minerals, which cannot be reproduced and thus can get exhausted sooner or later.
At the same time, it will be noted that natural resources are being consumed at a significantly high rate and at a great cost to the health of the natural environment and life on Earth. After all, fossils are remains of organisms of past geologic ages, buried millions of years ago. The pressure of the massive weight of rock and mud which covered the organic matter created heat, which changed this matter over a period of several hundred million years to oil, that is, remains of ancient marine organisms, coal, as remains of ancient swamps and forests, and natural gas.
This is not to say that natural resources can harm the Earth's environment, on their own. It is actually the burning of fossil fuels in factories to produce goods or generate power, and the fuels used by trucks, automobiles and jet planes that have caused acid rain and a great increase in carbon dioxide and pollution in the atmosphere.
Moreover, forests that used to absorb carbon dioxide are being destroyed, with the result that it freely traps heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, thus causing global warming, which is melting glaciers, raising sea levels, changing climate, thereby, causing violent weather, widespread destruction of crops, famine, floods, droughts, taking in strides the loss of plants and animals.
This, precisely, sums up why increasing emphasis has come to be laid on developing new ways to use clean energy sources which come from renewable resources. All in all, it will now be in the fitness of things for Pakistan, which has lately been more vigorously toying with ideas of harnessing renewable resources of energy, to chalk out a comprehensive, and workable energy plan, largely based on renewable energy resources in proportion to their tremendous potential.
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