Ahmed Khan Malik

The Sindh government will fully support the development of new clean energy projects to harness the vast solar and wind power generation potential of the province under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode. The provincial government has formulated a policy to promote clean energy to address the energy crisis and protect the environment, the province’s energy secretary Rehan Iqbal Baloch said. He told WealthPK that Sindh had an abundance of resources to generate renewable electricity and support of the private sector was essential to tapping this potential.  He said the waste-to-energy was one such mode of generating renewable electricity that was yet to be explored in urban parts of the province. He pointed out that earlier PPP mode was successfully implemented for extracting Thar coal for electricity production. “We are open to ideas as the private sector is more than welcome to come to us with their proposals for building new clean energy projects in the province as Sindh government has its PPP unit for implementing such plans,” he said. 

Rehan Iqbal said the Sindh government aimed to establish a 400MW solar park under the PPP mode till 2025. Meanwhile, Irfan Ahmed, an energy expert, lamented that less than one gigawatt of clean power based on solar energy was being produced in Pakistan when the clean energy resource could produce up to 2,900GWs of electricity. He advocated urgent utilisation of the PPP mode to improve the functioning of loss-making power distribution companies so that they could enhance their role in promoting clean electricity in the country. He suggested the government minimise its involvement in the energy sector and only act as a facilitator to let the private sector come and run the affairs of power companies.He lamented that some other countries, which had launched their regulatory regimes for renewable energy projects almost the same time Pakistan introduced such systems, had shown massive growth in producing clean electricity.

The Sindh province is endowed with vast alternative/renewable energy (ARE) potential. The most viable ARE resource options in Sindh include wind (off-shore & on-shore), solar (both solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal), micro, mini and small hydel, biomass and waste-to-energy and geothermal. The province has identified economically viable wind energy potential of 55,000MW in Thatta and Jamshoro districts. Umer Kot and Tharparkar districts are also potential sites linked with the same corridor for exploring wind energy potential. The Sindh province has a large viable resource of about 1,000GW solar energy potential identified by a US agency. This huge resource is suitable for both PV and thermal – concentrated solar power applications.

Credit: INP-WealthPk