It, indeed, is heartening to learn from Business Recorder reports from Islamabad that the Alternative Energy Development Board is proceeding apace with the task assigned to it. This has reference, among other things, to its two-day seminar on "Indigenous Development of Innovative Technologies in the Field of Renewable Energy", in Islamabad, which concluded on an encouraging note on August 23.
For one thing, it will be noted that the event attracted not only local participants from different organisations, but also energy experts from other countries, including India, Nepal, Canada and Japan. More to this, the foreign experts also presented papers highlighting the prospects and opportunities for developing renewable energy sources in this country. An important contribution was the paper on policy recommendations on introducing bio-fuels in Pakistan, which Rabia Shoaib Ahmed from Clean Power presented, pointing out that introduction of bio-fuel would help alleviate poverty at grassroots level too.
Referring to abundance of bio-fuel in the country, she is reported to have urged the Agriculture Ministry to encourage wide-scale cultivation of sugarcane, potatoes, beetroot and other bio-fuel yielding trees and crops. At the same time, she also made a pointed reference to advisability of conversion of industrial units and automobiles to bio-fuels, in order to control pollution and to reduce the cost of energy.
Similarly, Dr A.R. Qazi, from AWF, presented his paper on the utilisation of vegetable oil as fuel for automobiles, saying this system is most suitable and cost-effective for Pakistan, particularly, in Northern Areas. Pointing out that vegetables oil has no nitrogen content and also that it has lower impact on marine life, he laid emphasis on the need of growing vegetable in larger quantities, so as to help produce a larger volume of energy raw material.
From all indications, the seminar should have proved worthwhile in so far as the contribution of the participants is concerned. It will be recalled that AEDB was set up only two years ago, by the then Prime Minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, primarily, with the aim of providing electricity to the remote areas of the country that had remained deprived of it rather too long. Attributable as this deprivation was to the unending energy famine in the country, his emphasis on recourse to alternative energy resources should appeal to reason.
Needless to point out, it was not for the first time that an effort was made to argue for reliance on alternate/renewable sources of energy, more so because of economy in the cost of production. It had earlier fired the imagination of the planners too, leading to the creation of ATDO, some three decades ago, with a marked emphasis on use of bio-mass, but for understandable reasons it failed to make much headway.
In the meantime, the energy crisis worsened because of the grim failure of WAPDA to stem the tide. However, the creation of AEDB, will be noted to have helped in its own way to tide over the crisis, thereby paving the way for increased electrification at sensationally lower costs.
In his address to the seminar, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Energy, Mukhtar Ahmed, said the government would generate energy through alternative sources to meet the country's growing requirements, saying the government would support AEDB technically as well as financially to generate maximum energy, so as to ensure availability of electricity to half of the population in the country.
Similarly, AEDB chairman Air Marshal Shahid Hamid (Retd) is reported to have stated that it would generate 100mw electricity through alternative energy sources by the end of 2005, saying 7,500 villages would be given electricity by the 2007. All in all, the way will appear to have been paved for speedy electrification of the country, thereby calling for unceasing efforts to carry on the good work with a sense of devotion.