Pakistan's renewable energy market emerging with high growth potential: President

• President Alvi emphasized the need for making renewable energy more affordable, reliable and dispatch-able by integrating the industry's broadest portfolios of renewable technologies.
• President said the government must encourage investors to locally manufacture solar panels to reduce the import of expensive panels.

ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi on Thursday said Pakistan was an emerging renewable energy market with an immense potential to grow exponentially in the years to come.

Speaking at the inaugural session of Pakistan Renewable Energy Summit 2019, here, the president called for setting a new paradigm in the country's renewable energy sector particularly through adoption of solar means to urgently meet growing needs of the nation.

The summit, hosted by World Wind Energy Association and Global 100pc RE, gathered national and international experts on energy who discussed the areas including global energy transition, decarbonizing industry's power needs, grid versus off-grid distributed energy and achieving 30 percent renewable energy by 2030.

President Alvi emphasized the need for making renewable energy more affordable, reliable and dispatch-able by integrating the industry's broadest portfolios of renewable technologies.

He said by 2025, using renewable resources had the potential to create 25 percent of the country's energy requirements.

He said in past, the invention of steam engine that used coal as an energy source, brought a change in human lives, however today, different kinds of energy was required which did not deplete natural resources.

He mentioned that consumerism was another trend of mankind which focused on producing and wasting more than needed.

"With regard to energy, whatever we will do today will shape the future of the world," he said.

President Alvi stressed the need for exploring cleaner, more efficient and economically viable sources of power generation including wind, hydro and solar energy, to meet the future needs of the nation.

He said there must be a good balance in utilizing the resources of energy may it coal, water, solar and nuclear.

He said Pakistan was moving towards harnessing colossal renewable energy potential to supplement its initiatives to meet increasing share of renewable power in the power mix to at least 30 percent of the installed capacity by 2030.

On hydro power, the president said building of dams was necessary for water storage, however it should not be the primary way of energy generation.

The president said the government must encourage investors to locally manufacture solar panels to reduce the import of expensive panels.

The two-day summit aims to bring globally well-known companies and speakers to Pakistan to share global lessons learned, innovative technology applications, financing mechanisms, and best practices.

One of the goals is to create awareness of the global momentum for renewable energy to advocate for competitive renewable energy market in Pakistan.