Energy, electricity supply-demand gap: workshop on energy modelling project on April 27

To overcome the severe energy and electricity supply-demand gap, Pakistan is currently facing, a workshop on 'Pakistan Integrated Energy Modelling (Pak-IEM)-Project Model Design' will be held in Islamabad on April 27 to discuss and find a way out to this crisis.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing technical assistance towards the implementation of this project on development of Integrated Energy Modelling System for Pakistan to help address the energy issues. In October 2008, the inception workshop for Pak-IEM was held to introduce the Pakistan energy community to this important ADB-sponsored project being undertaken by the Planning Commission. Following this workshop, the Pak-IEM team embarked on data collection phase of the project, collecting energy data from numerous public and private organisations.
The data collection phase has progressed to the point where preliminary design for the energy model is being formulated and will be presented to key stakeholders and supporting organisations during the April 27 workshop. The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) being an important stakeholder will be represented by Engr M A Jabbar, Chairman of Site Association of Industry (SAI) at the workshop.
According to the inception report, prepared by International Resources Group, in association with MEConsult for ADB and Ministry of Planning and Development, the country is currently a net energy importer, with demand for energy forecast to grow at 12 percent annually over the next decade, and with widening electricity supply gap.
In order to begin to redress the energy shortages currently faced by the country and to establish an environment conducive to promoting the kinds of investments needed for sustainable economic growth, it is essential that there should be a functioning planning capacity with skills and an appropriate planning framework to foster better informed decision-making. Significant national benefit can be achieved through an energy planning framework that integrates all parts of the energy system, engages key stakeholders, and allows national policy makers to identify and examine various policies supported by optimal analysis of the alternatives. The insights that can be captured using integrated energy system modelling have been clearly shown in other developing, transition, and industrialised countries.
The objectives of ADB technical assistance are to assist the Government of Pakistan to develop an integrated energy model that will allow a national energy planning group to assess the impacts of various strategies for meeting energy requirements in an optimal manner.
The model will integrate planning factors pertaining to financial, economic, energy supply, national resource, energy use, environmental impact, technology improvement, energy efficiency, and conservation to assess the impact of policies that will shape the country for the coming decades. This will allow national policy makers and stakeholders within the various energy sector ministries and regulatory bodies to collaborate and work through an open and transparent process with a dedicated energy planning team capable of producing regular integrated analysis of least-cost energy planning strategies and national policy options.
This institutional capacity will allow the various options to be examined in a clear and comparable manner so as to facilitate better communication and foster better co-operation within the various government agencies.
An optimal integrated energy planning capability will also provide the Government with an ideal framework for examining post-Kyoto proposals as they come forward from the deliberations just getting underway. It will allow the Government of Pakistan to establish emission baselines and then evaluate various greenhouse gas (GHG) emission "targets on the system, to see how the target can be met at least cost, what kinds of changes are imposed on the system to achieve this, and the implications on energy security; quantify the offsets generated; and value their carbon rights".
The framework can be also directly used to assess the benefits arising from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) opportunities, ranging from individual, large-scale projects to programmatic approaches for efficiency improvements or distributed renewable energy technologies. Building this capacity over the next 18 months, including conducting such assessments during the monitoring phase, will create within the Government of Pakistan a solid analytic foundation for the negotiations, as well as the resulting implementation phase.