Electricity Capacity Increases In The Country
Electricity Capacity Increases In The Country: The installed capacity to generate electricity in Pakistan has increased up to 29,573 Mega Watts by February 2018 which stood at 22,812MW in June 2013, stated by the Economic Survey of Pakistan.
This shows 30% growth in the capacity to generate electricity all over the country. In electricity distribution, average losses were reduced to 17.9% in 2018 which shows that government has made a 1% reduction in electricity losses. 39 projects with collective capacity of 12,230MW have been added in the grid stations and due to significant improvement in the energy mix, the country’s dependence on expensive oil has been reduced. Original crude oil meets only 15% of the country’s total requirements, while 85% requirements are met through imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products. Large scale manufacturing (LSM) got a 6% boost by the electricity capacity which is an 11-year high.
Electricity consumption is considered one of the most important economic welfare indicators regarding availability of affordable energy. Pakistan is bestowed with enormous hydro and coal potential which, if carefully used, can resolve future energy crisis on long-term basis.
Under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), financial outlay of around $35 billion has been made for energy sector projects including power generation and transmission projects to be implemented in IPP mode.
In case of natural gas, the gap between demand and supply got widened due to increase in gas demand and depletion of existing sources. Importing gas though transnational pipelines and LNG to mitigate the shortfall is the major effort on government’s part.
Pakistan has large local coal reserves with an estimate of over 186 billion tons. These coal reserves are sufficient to meet the energy requirements of the country on long-term basis. There has been significant increase in import of coal due to commissioning of new coal based power plants at Sahiwal and Port Qasim.
But keeping in mind the risk it can bring to environment these coal power plants needs to be eco-friendly so that electricity does not come at the cost of increased air pollution and temperature.
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