Green energy ensures sustainability: CM

KARACHI:

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that his government is striving for socio-economic sustainable development through green energy initiatives in line with the international commitments. “Apart from the development of indigenous Thar coal, various projects have been completed,” the CM said while speaking at the inauguration ceremony held to distribute the Solar-Home-System (SHS) by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Thursday.  
The CM mentioned that the completed projects include the development of a wind corridor in Jhampir, District Thatta, where 1,845MW of power is being generated. Additionally, 40 public sector buildings, mostly hospitals, where rooftop solar panels, with a capacity of 26MW, have been installed. Furthermore, 352 rural health centres have been solarised with a standard 3KW system.
In addition to this, 24 schemes for the solarisation of public sector schools, colleges, primary healthcare facilities, jails, and government buildings are in progress, the CM said. He added that the solar programme has been further accelerated, and during the current year, 656 government schools would be on solar power system.
He added that the initiative has been taken to combat the exorbitant electricity bills charged by the distribution companies.
The provincial Energy dept has collected the figures for the number of households having up to 300 units of electricity consumption and it was revealed that 2.6 million households have no access to electricity. 
Murad mentioned that as many as 2.4 million households consume less than 100 units of electricity; 0.37 million have a consumption of less than 200 units and 0.498 million households consume less than 300 units. “We have developed a plan to provide free electricity to the poor people through small SHS with Inverters and batteries under interest-free loan scheme.