Coal gasification offers one of the most versatile and clean ways to convert coal into electricity, hydrogen and other valuable energy products. These views were expressed by experts on Thursday while speaking at a workshop jointly organised by the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) on coal gasification and its benefits to the industry.
LCCI Senior Vice President Kashif Younis Mehar, General Manager SMEDA Alamghir Chaudhry, Engineer S A Khalid, Engineer Zahid Malik, Engineer Khalid Umer and Mohammad Shakeel were prominent among the speakers. They said the irony of the fact is that three decades ago, electricity was generated from hydel and non hydel resources with a proportion of 70:30. "Now the situation has totally reversed. It means that the country is relying too much on gas, oil and other sources to generate electricity. It has resulted in costly electricity which has wiped out competitive edge in international market and also pushed us to that stage where our future has become sceptical."
Keeping in view the shortage of natural gas and high prices of oil, we are bound to explore alternative ways of producing energy. Though some experts suggest going for solar and wind energy but the installation cost of such projects are way too high, which makes it unviable in our case. Luckily, having abundant reserves of coal, which will not cost us dearly, we can utilise it for energy production. He said that according to reports 80,000 megawatts of electricity is being produced through underground coal gasification in different countries of the world including South Africa, Australia, China, Russia, Poland, Czech and Uzbekistan. But sadly, the government did not allocate funds in the federal budget 2012-13 for this project.
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