Khawaja Asif on energy conservation

Addressing the Karachi Industrial Forum earlier this week, Federal Water and Power Minister Khawaja Asif said what a responsible official must on the much-neglected issue of energy conservation. The grand plans of the government to add 10,000 megawatts to the national grid by 2018, according to him, are “not enough”. He said that “Pakistanis need to conserve both water and electricity because of their scarcity”. The “concept of conservation is alien to us. Nowhere in the world do markets function till 2am in the morning. But this happens in Pakistan.” He went on to claim that conservation could provide “free electricity”, a reference perhaps to the evidence that conservation is the most cost-effective and cheapest source of energy anywhere in the world. What is needed is a “paradigm change in our behaviour” and a “conservation plan for power”.

All of this makes perfect sense. But Khawaja Asif is not a columnist like me who can only analyse and prescribe. Nor is he in the opposition that is confined only to makeing some noise. He is the minister of water and power, so instead of lecturing industrialists, traders and the public, he should be seen to be doing something to promote a culture of conservation or, at the very least, planning for it. But the minister is doing neither. If only he had displayed a fraction of the zeal shown in clearing the circular debt in the honeymoon period of his government, he would not have been forced to make the kind of speech he made in Karachi.



Khawaja Asif suffers from the same disease his colleagues suffer from — a belief that development is a game of mega projects. Small, to them, is ugly, not beautiful. Instead of making the Army Public School better and building more schools like it, they announce the building of a university. If the problem is traffic, they widen the roads rather than manage the traffic. Yes, power projects are different from road projects and metros, as he once famously said while chiding the Punjab chief minister. But power projects have long gestation periods. A sensible and effectively managed conservation programme could have easily bridged half of the gap between demand and supply. There is a lot of room to improve the efficiency of energy use in Pakistan. The GDP produced per unit of energy is atrociously low.

Like many good things, the issue of energy conservation had been officially recognised as far back as 1986. Like always, however, things did not move beyond the creation of an organisation, in this case, the National Energy Conservation Centre. It was supposed to be the focal point for energy conservation. However, it has been reduced to the status of a football between ministries ever since its birth. In 1986, its control was with the Planning Commission. It was transferred to the Ministry of Water and Power in 1993. It was then moved to the Ministry of Environment in 1996, only to return to the Ministry of Water and Power in 2011. Not only does this body lack ownership, it is also a dumping ground for officers who fall out of favour with their political bosses.

There is an Energy Conservation Bill waiting to become an Act. There is no explanation as to why it is still pending. In April 2015, the Cabinet Committee on Energy met under the prime minister and decided that guidelines for the rational use of electricity would be formulated by the Ministry of Water and Power for implementation in the offices of the federal government as well as provincial governments. Public awareness campaigns, closure of shops at 8pm, powering street lights through solar energy and, most importantly, an energy audit for industries were all proposed. It is time the minister looked in his own backyard.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th,  2015.

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