News Desk
ISLAMABAD: The transition to clean energy may be costly, but the current Economic, Energy and Environment (3E) crises demand a robust investment in renewable energy (RE) sector.
This was the crux of a panel discussion, ‘Addressing the Economic, Energy, and Environment (3E) Crises: Innovation and Technology Driven Approach’, organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here, a news release said.
The experts further called for innovation, robust investment, and real-time data-driven decision-making for addressing the energy and economic woes of Pakistan.
SDPI Senior Advisor, Dr Hassan Daud Butt said that linking energy, environment, and economy was fundamental to the socioeconomic development of the society.
He stressed behavioral changes, novel technology, and policy solutions as the way forward to come out of the existing crisis. He said conservation of energy was a prerequisite to reducing financial expenditure and addressing climate change-related issues.
He added that the unequal distribution of wealth has become horrific in Pakistan and to improve the situation, a viable solution is necessary for which immediate policy intervention coupled with swift implementation is needed.
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at K-Electric, Sadia Dada stressed the need for more investments in the power sector to resolve the challenges associated with it so that the 3E crises could be overcome.
“Since its privatization, KE has doubled its customer base from 1.8 million to 3.4 million, increased its energy supplies from 2,200 MW to 3,380 MW, and has reduced its transmission and distribution (T&D) losses from 34.2% to 15.3%, which surpasses the target set by NEPRA for the year”, she added.
She said all these achievements were possible due to targeted investments of 474 billion – six times more than their profits, made by the company across its value chain since privatization.
Muhammad Basit Ghauri, Program Officer, Renewables First, stressed Demand-side Management through innovation to efficiently manage the energy peak load and strengthening the linkages between academia and industry to support innovations driven by industry demand.
Stabilizing Energy conservation
Energy Expert, Asad Mahmood stressed the need for establishing energy conservation cells across the public and private energy distribution companies to resolve the energy crisis. “As the per capita energy consumption increases, the competition for resources and consequently the cost of energy increases, thereby triggering energy poverty in the future as well”, he said.
He emphasized that public energy companies must align standard industrial classification codes with that of Bureau of Statistics so that economic activity could be efficiently captured in billing.
SDPI Research Consultant, Dr Khalid Waleed said, “Our energy choices are coming at the cost of economy and environment while innovative and technological solutions are at the heart of the 3E crises.”
He suggested that Pakistan should negotiate for debt restriction in the form of debt to climate and nature swaps to build adaptation and resilience to climate change, support the transition to clean energy and reduce the national dependency on import fuels.
SDPI Senior Research Associate, Ubaid ur Rehman Zia said in the backdrop of high inflation, increasing interest rates, high supply chain cost, and rising commodity prices, the competitiveness of RE projects against fossil fuels has been impacted.
To maintain the cost competitiveness of new RE-based systems, he said, it was critical to de-risk the investments, provide regulatory and policy support, improve the creditworthiness for the RE developers, and establish demand signals.
