‘Govt to mitigate reliance on fossil fuels’

AEDB CEO says govt aims to boost share of renewable energy to 30% by 2030

ISLAMABAD:

An international webinar organised jointly by Agora Energiewende, Germany and Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), reviewed and discussed the ‘2030 solar and wind roadmap for Pakistan’ chalked out by National Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), under its Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP) 2022-31. Renewable energy officials and experts attended the session.

Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) CEO, Shah Jahan Mirza reiterated the government’s commitment towards mitigating the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and the de-carbonisation of the power sector. He explained that the ambitious targets of the renewable energy uptake, as outlined in the Alternative and Renewable Policy 2019, aims to boost the share of renewable energy to 30% by 2030.

“Many mega-scale and distributed generation projects based on solar PV are in the pipeline and AEDB is committed to their timely execution,” he said.

Deputy Managing Director, National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC), Ali Zain Banatwala highlighted that renewable energy integration with the grid may cause some issues with the system operations of the grid due to its intermittent nature. He said, however, “NTDC is carrying out a detailed analysis of the scenarios of renewable energy uptake, mandating the collective efforts of de-carbonisation of the power sector at the earliest.”

Experts discussed the results of an ambitious solar and wind roadmap performed by ‘8.2 Renewable Energy Experts’ and ‘Power Planners International’, offering recommendations to accelerate power development beyond the governmental target adopted in the IGCEP.

The study titled “Beyond IGCEP 2022” reviews the 10-year generation expansion planning for Pakistan. Based on the hourly dispatch of 2030, it comes to the conclusion that an increase of the planned total VRE capacity from 20 GW to 33 GW by 2030 will be possible if minor grid infrastructure reinforcements are added. This will reduce total emissions from energy generation by 50% and average energy generation costs by 15%.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2023.

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