Speakers at a seminar have emphasised on energy conservation and its efficient use to effectively deal with the crisis and called for significant legislation at the earliest to avoid growing energy losses in the country.
Speaking at the seminar titled "Energy Legislation-Response to Conservation, Efficiency & Alternatives" arranged by Institute of Policy Studies, here on Wednesday, they said that realising the energy crisis an initiative was taken by PEC in 2010, when Enercon contacted the body to incorporate energy provisions in the building code act of Pakistan.
In response PEC formulated a taskforce and took all the public and private stakeholders on board including Ministry of Water and Power, Housing and Works, Pepco, Enercon, PSQCA, CDA, PEC and intellectuals, academicians, engineers, architects and legal experts. But no significant step had been taken so far in that regard, they lamented.
The seminar was addressed by Dr Ashfaq Ahmed Shiekh, Additional Registrar Pakistan Engineering Council, Asad Mahmood, Director Technical Enercon, Khalid Rahman, DG-IPS, Ameena Sohail, Senior IPS Associate, while Mirza Hamid Hasan, former secretary water and power. Chairman IPS Tawanai (Energy) Programme was in the chair.
It was pointed out that the purpose of energy provisions in the building code was to provide minimum requirements for energy-efficient design and to improve energy efficiency in buildings by incorporating best practices according to our environment, coupled with traditional materials, technologies and craftsmanship developed indigenously.
It was shared that energy provisions would be implemented in two phases; in the first phase large scale commercial consumers having a total connected load of 100 KW or a conditioned area of 900 m2 or greater or unconditioned buildings with covered area of 1,200 m2 or more to be dealt with. Provisions would be implemented to small scale end users in the second phase.
It was informed that governing body of the PEC had approved the bill and the Ministry of Housing and Works had to prepare the summary for its approval from the cabinet. Asad Mahmood observed that conservation had not been the top of priority of the authorities while addressing the issues related to the crisis, as Wapda and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources focused more on generation and little importance was given to the conservation. "Conservation should be part of everyday discussions," he remarked.
The conservation expert regretted that stated negligence proved to be a stumbling block in delayed approval of the Building Code. He said that various developments were in progress to streamline the initiatives that had been taken by the Enercon: the establishment of Pakistan Energy Conservation Board at the central and provincial level was just a case in point to facilitate the end consumer regarding energy efficient products and practices by setting benchmarks, certifications and conducting energy audits.
Ameena Sohail highlighted the 'Distributed Generations Rules' issued by Nepra that covered the usage, generation and distribution of small-scale power generation technologies located close to the end consumer. She mentioned that there would be no need for generation licenses and Discos would handle all distributed generation at their end through agreements for Net-metering, Banking and Wheeling. She further added that tariffs were to be determined as per Nepra approval.
Khalid Rahman noted that there were many actors working for the betterment of the sector in their individual and institutional capacities and there was a need to streamline and synergise all efforts to get the desired results. While concluding the seminar, Mirza Hamid Hassan said it was noted that most of the consumers thought about generation and capacity building instead of conservation. He was of the view that energy conservation was in a way energy generation.
Comments
Comments are closed.