Activists find fault with govt’s power generation plans

The federal government's Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP), 2024, seems to be receiving flak from the social and environmental activists. A discussion forum in Hyderabad, organised at a hotel on Monday by Alliance for Climate Justice and Clean Energy (ACGCE), found the plan shorn of the green energy projects.

"The IGCEP won't just lead to a sharp increase in the prices of electricity but it will also devastate the natural environment, affecting river flows, contaminating groundwater, and polluting the air," contended Zain Moulvi, a research director at the Alternative Law Collective (ALC) which is a platform consisting lawyers and academics committed to social, economic and environmental justice.

"Such projects have displaced local people [in the past] from their homes, lands, and sources of income, forcing them into destitution, as seen in Thar, Tarbela, and other areas." He described the projects of constructing dams on the Indus River as anti-environment.

He asserted that the government can produce cheaper and cleaner energy from solar and wind plants in comparison to harnessing coal and building dams. He recalled that the IGCEP was meant to come up with ideas of affordable and clean energy but the policy document has been doing the opposite in practice.

Moulvi maintained that the government's energy plan for future which were prepared during the last two to three decades had always idealised the renewable energy but on the ground the same has not materialised. He said the government is taking huge amount of loans from the World Bank to construct dams. "The latest edition of the IGCEP has overlooked the need for inexpensive electricity generation, prioritizing large projects based on fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas besides hydroelectric power." He said Sindh and Balochistan provinces offered huge corridors of wind and solar energy but the government is not prioritizing such renewable electricity generation projects.

"The policymakers sitting in Islamabad are indifferent to the impacts on the lives of the people living in the most underdeveloped areas such as the districts of the Sindh's river delta," he argued.

Noor Bajeer of the Civil Society Support Program said the power generation projects which were established up to four decades ago continue to adversely harm the environment and consequently the country's people. He deplored that the government has not learned from the past policymaking mistakes because instead of the clean energy the anti climate projects are being proposed in the policy documents.

Journalist Shams Kohistani, who introduced himself as an affected person of Dasu dam, claimed that there is not sufficient water in the Indus river at the point where the dam is being built. He claimed that 45 villages including the graveyards and a centuries old mosque will be decimated in the process.

Tharparkar's resident Obhayo Junejo said across the border, India is setting up wind and solar projects in Rajasthan. He proposed that Pakistan's government should also launch similar projects because weather and terrain of Tharparkar is identical to Rajasthan.