‘Power Day 2021’ seminar: minister announces Punjab govt’s solar energy plan

LAHORE: Punjab Housing, Urban Development and Public Health Engineering Minister Mian Mahmood-ur-Rasheed has announced the government’s plan to convert 60 percent of power consumption to solar energy by 2030.

The Minister was addressing a seminar ‘Power Day 2021’ organised by Sungrow, a company deals in renewables solutions’ here on Friday. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) Punjab Director General Ambreen Sajjad and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Punjab Chief Executive Amjad Ali Awan, experts representing national and international companies and other attended the event.

The Minister further said that the government had already initiated a robust plan with funds amounting to billions of rupees to convert universities, schools in remote districts of Punjab, all educational institutions and industrial units to renewable/solar energy in the province. “Another very encouraging trend in being witnessed where people are converting mosques in urban areas on solar energy on self-help basis,” he said, adding that a mosque, whose monthly electricity bill had exceeded Rs 500,000 per month, had come down to zero besides earning additional income through sale of power to distribution companies through net-metering. Similarly, he said, the sensitisation among people in urban cities has been increasing and they are fast converting institutions, mosques, commercial units/shops and residences to solar power, which is extremely cost effective.

“The federal government had implemented a very effective solar power policy in order to ensure provision of solar energy paraphernalia to the consumers at a very subsidised rate. Pakistan is already producing 1,600 megawatt electricity through solar energy,” he added.

Amjad Ali Awan informed the seminar that up to 70 percent generation of electricity in Pakistan was based on thermal energy, which explains the mega scale of carbon footprint in the country. “This is the time to benefit from solar energy, especially when 80 percent of capital cost has been slashed since it was first introduced in the country,” he said, adding that solar energy has the cheapest tariff of 5 cents per watt available in Pakistan.

He said that the scalability of solar energy from kilowatts to megawatts and to gigawatts rests with renewable energy as Pakistan has come out of the crisis of renewable energy generation.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021