There was a time some years' back when both SSGC and SNGPL were instructed to sanction gas supply only to industrial and commercial consumers using efficient cogeneration/ combined heat and power systems and yet we have wasted enormous quantity of gas on inefficient installations, some even ignoring the sanctioning conditions mentioned in the official documents. If we had followed the minimum efficiency requirements, the situation would be so different, both in terms of costs and availability.
Ideal efficient use of gas Win many industrial and commercial applications would have not only met the energy requirements but also reduced costs of production in critical textile and chemical processing industries. Large centrally air-conditioned commercial buildings, specially hospitals and hotels, are ideal examples of efficient energy utilization the world over but we simply do not care as the very high energy costs are simply "absorbed", leading to overall inflation which affects everyone.
Just to take the example of hospitals, we do not have even one example of efficient co-generation/cheap installation anywhere in Pakistan. What is happening elsewhere? The latest example of award-winning cogen installation is in Houston Methodist Hospital where the large requirements of power and steam (including air-conditioning) were met with a thermal efficiency in excess of 80 percent. This is just one example; otherwise, there are cogen installations in excess of 85,000MW in the US, all for efficient utilization of available gas and distributed generation to avoid undue pressure on transmission and distribution facilities!
Are the engineering communities to continue sleeping and allowing non-technical persons to get away with murder?
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