The Recorder's news coverage "Pakistan to face 5,000 MW power shortage by 2006 (July 11 issue) and July 12 editorial "The rising power demand" again high-lights our critical energy situation. Drastic steps are now required to solve the basic problems of inadequate planning, otherwise we really face very serious consequences.
Firstly, we need to conserve energy (rampant use of air-conditioners in residences, encouraged by subsidised electrical energy and steam/hot water generation in inefficient boilers in industries are the worst examples of energy wastage).
Secondly, we must plan to utilise efficient technologies in industries as well as for thermal power generation. Energy costs should never be subsidized (except perhaps for the basic needs of the deprived section of society using a maximum 100 kWH unit per month) and it is difficult to understand the logic of paying huge amounts of tax-money to the WAPDA & KESC to cover privileged people's power bills for air-conditioners.
There is definitely a better way of spending our tax money to solve people's problems instead of encouraging waste.
Similarly, the industries should not be encouraged to waste energy by giving them special permissions to get a natural gas supply for power generation when they are not ready to use efficient technologies.
Wasting our precious natural gas on power projects which are only 1/3rd efficient (2/3rd of our precious gas is wasted) is devoid of basic logic.
The world is going the "high efficiency way"! You cannot exist anymore on obsolete technologies and most of our thermal power stations are just about the worst possible examples of poor efficiency.
Our major thermal power plants, most of them the result of infamous 1994 energy policy, are based on the most inefficient conventional steam and diesel-cycle power stations and unfortunately, we are allowing the conversion of these furnace oil plants to precious natural gas, without any engineering planning.
All these steam power stations should have been offered to private entrepreneurs fur "re-powering" so that these could have been converted in to combined cycle power stations with 50% higher efficiencies before allowing natural gas supply.
The additional 50% power generation, with the same fuel use, could pay for the investment and ultimately, the country would be the winner. The huge amount of money being spent on getting HUBCO grid connections for KESC is an ideal example of how little we care for economy and efficiency.
The same money should have been spent on re-powering Bin Qasim thermal power plants so that firstly, the KESC costs of generation would have come down (instead, KESC is now being burdened with the exorbitant HUBCO costs) and secondly, the basic acceptance of high efficiency as a basic tool would have been shown to other plants also.
And just as important, this "re-powering" would have been done much faster than 2-1/2 to 3 years (and perhaps longer) required for the HUBCO line to KESC.
Even for an "efficient" combined cycle power station (Kot Addu and Guddu), WAPDA would be well advised to study modern methods of increasing efficiency as well as power capacity augmentation in summer when these power plants lose upto 30% capacity (when you need power the most).
We see capacity reduction of our combined cycle power station every summer but do not even hear of steps to use modern technology to re-gain lost capacities at a fraction of the cost of a new power plant.
Even in the United States, which has been very slow in adopting conservation policies, you can now see major changes in basic planning, including technologies to increase power plant capacity and efficiency.
Even green building concepts are new being encouraged so widely, as was evident in an engineering conference arranged by ASHRAE in Nashville TN two weeks back. Not only are entire city planners ensuring green buildings (which would drastically reduce power consumption in all types of building usages) but the sense of competition is now encouraging many private project owners there to use the "green" concept.
What are we doing to solve our very critical energy problems? Other than encouraging "wastage" by subsidising power supply for air-conditioners in houses and inefficient boilers in the industry, with no concept of energy conservation and the use of obsolete technologies for thermal power generation, we are really doing nothing.
We need to urgently set our energy priorities right since we can ill-afford the present obsolete policies if we really want sustainable growth in this highly competitive world. The world is not going to wait for us. We will just be over-taken, with the industrial sector at a very high risk of diminishing production in the immediate future.