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Pakistan’s ‘First-Ever’ Electric Bus Hits The Road In Karachi

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Sindh transport minister says the bus is designed to provide the citizens with an affordable commute​

Bus-750x375.jpg

Sindh Information and Transport Minister Sharjeel Memon on Friday announced the launch of ‘Pakistan’s first’ electric bus service, in Karachi.

Memon inaugurated the bus service at the Clock Tower, Seaview, flanked by other provincial ministers, before traveling in the bus and reviewing the facilities.

Speaking to the media, he said, “These buses will be running entirely on battery and will not spread any sort of pollution.”

“Along with bringing the pollution down, the buses would allow the citizens to avail travel at low fares,” the minister added.

According to him, it will begin its journey from Tank Chowk, Malir Cantt and conclude at the Clock Tower roundabout, Seaview via Khayaban-e-Ittehad road.

He highlighted that those travelling to the airport can also benefit from the service. “While travelling to the airport via private cab costs around Rs1,500, “you can travel to the airport in this bus for only Rs50.”
On the occasion, he thanked the Civil Aviation Authority for allowing the bus to enter the airport limits.
On the maintenance, Memon said it was up to the residents to take care of it. “We have to work together to resolve the city’s traffic woes as well as other issues.”

According to a recent report, the strategies adopted around the globe to reduce vehicular emissions include the introduction of mass transit systems in big cities. Leaving aside the debate of route and capacity sufficiency, the only claim to fame for mass transit systems in Pakistan is their cheapness. Due to subsidised tickets, the section of the population using mass transit most frequently are students or working men and women, which is undoubtedly a positive development.

The governments must actively legislate for hourly paid parking and discourage car use by making it expensive to drive. But, to do so equitably, alternative infrastructure needs to be built first. A well-integrated network of mass transit systems must be built, and parking spots must be established at every stop for feeder buses or trains. Every road must have a dedicated cycling lane as well as a footpath for pedestrians. Cycling culture must be promoted by policy-making and not limited to recreational Sunday cycling detours. Moreover, the use of electric cycles must be encouraged by collaborating with private enterprises.
 
Looooool where r u residing?

Pakistan faces an unexpected dilemma: too much electricity

By Zofeen T. Ebrahim
7 MIN READ

KARACHI, Pakistan (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - After suffering decades of electricity shortages that left families and businesses in the dark, Pakistan finds itself with a new problem: more electrical generating capacity than it needs.
Large-scale construction of new power plants - largely coal-fired ones funded by China - has dramatically boosted the country’s energy capacity.
“It’s true. We are producing much more than we need,” Tabish Gauhar, a special assistant to the prime minister on power, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.
But even as supply surges, electric power is still not reaching up to 50 million people in Pakistan who need it, according to a 2018 World Bank report, though expansion of tranmission lines is planned.
Power outages also remain common, with a transmission problem just last month leaving many of the country’s major cities in the dark.
Excess fossil fuel energy capacity also is boosting electricity costs - and raising questions about whether the country will now manage to achieve its climate change goals, with scientists saying coal needs to rapidly disappear from the world’s energy mix to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

RENEWABLES AIM?​

Last year, Prime Minister Imran Khan promised that Pakistan by 2030 would produce 60% of its electrical power from renewable sources.
Currently the country gets 64% of its electricity from fossil fuels, with another 27% from hydropower, 5% from nuclear power and just 4% from renewables such as solar and wind, Gauhar said.

The country has already scrapped plans for two Chinese-funded coal plants - but another seven commissioned as part of the sweeping China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project have gone ahead, and are expected to add up to 6,600 megawatts of capacity to the grid.
China has also funded new renewable energy but at a smaller scale, with six wind farms set to generate just under 400 MW of power, a 100 MW solar project and four hydropower plants expected to produce 3,400 MW by 2027.
CPEC aims to boost road, rail and air transport links and trade between China, Pakistan and other countries in the region, as well as boosting energy production.
Vaqar Zakaria, the head of Hagler Bailly Pakistan, an environmental consultancy firm based in Islamabad, said Pakistan’s coal-heavy power expansion was in line with its own former national aims.
“I think blaming the Chinese may not entirely be fair as setting up projects on local and imported coal was our country policy and priority,” he said.
Officials at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad did not respond to calls and email asking for comment.
As new largely coal-fired plants come online, Pakistan is expected by 2023 to have 50% more power capacity than currently needed.
Because the government must repay loans taken to build the plants and has signed contracts to buy their power, the overcapacity is producing costs “the government has to pay to the power producers under binding contracts, regardless of actual need,” Gauhar said.
“Our fixed-capacity charges have gone through the roof,” he added.

Those costs currently stand at 850 billion rupees ($5.3 billion) a year, but will rise to almost 1,450 billion rupees ($9 billion) a year by 2023 as new largely coal-fired power plants still being built come online, he said.
That is driving up rates consumers pay for power - 30% in the last two years, Gauhar said - a problem likely to continue unless Pakistan can find more buyers for its new generating capacity, such as by boosting manufacturing or pushing use of electric vehicles.
The government plans to decommission some older fossil fuel plants to cut overcapacity, he said - but it also pushing ahead to add new wind, solar and hydropower capacity to the grid to meet its climate goals.
The government is holding talks to renegotiate tariff rates with the country’s independent power producers, including fossil fuel, hydro, wind and solar companies, he said.
Whether it will seek similar rate renegotiations on Chinese-funded plants still in the pipeline, or longer debt repayment periods, remains unclear.

GAINING POWER​

When electricity projects now in the pipeline are completed in the next few years, Pakistan will have about 38,000 MW of capacity, Gauhar said.
But its current summertime peak demand is 25,000 MW, with electricity use falling to 12,000 MW in the winter, he said.
Saadia Qayyum, an energy specialist with the World Bank, said energy over-production was a better problem to have than undersupply as it allowed for growth - but the country needed new ways to use the electricity.

But incentivising electric transport, for instance, will be less than a green solution if a big share of the country’s new electricity is produced by coal plants, energy analysts said.
Gauhar said the government is offering discounted electricity tariffs to industrial customers, to try to lure those now dependent on their own gas-fired plants back to the national grid.
But demand for grid power “is a function of price, availability and reliability”, noted Zakaria, the environmental analyst - and high prices are likely to suppress demand and incentivise power theft, a serious problem in the country.
He predicted high-end residential and commercial customers would end up footing the bill for the excess generation capacity, as industries and agriculture receive power subsidies.
That could mean “paying customers will use less electricity, further worsening the situation”, particularly as more see an economic advantage in buying their own solar panels.
Despite the country’s energy surplus, the World Bank is investing $450 million over the next four years in renewable power in Pakistan, to try to cut the nation’s reliance on fossil fuel imports and lower energy costs, Qayyum said.
Gauhar said Pakistan would need some level of fossil-fuel-powered energy in coming years to help balance “intermittent” sources like solar and wind which do not generate electricity 24 hours a day.
But he said the long-term plan, still being discussed, was to have coal plants contribute no more than 15% of the country’s electricity capacity.

Reporting by Zofeen T. Ebrahim ; editing by Laurie Goering : Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.

 

Pakistan faces an unexpected dilemma: too much electricity

By Zofeen T. Ebrahim
7 MIN READ

KARACHI, Pakistan (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - After suffering decades of electricity shortages that left families and businesses in the dark, Pakistan finds itself with a new problem: more electrical generating capacity than it needs.
Large-scale construction of new power plants - largely coal-fired ones funded by China - has dramatically boosted the country’s energy capacity.
“It’s true. We are producing much more than we need,” Tabish Gauhar, a special assistant to the prime minister on power, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.
But even as supply surges, electric power is still not reaching up to 50 million people in Pakistan who need it, according to a 2018 World Bank report, though expansion of tranmission lines is planned.
Power outages also remain common, with a transmission problem just last month leaving many of the country’s major cities in the dark.
Excess fossil fuel energy capacity also is boosting electricity costs - and raising questions about whether the country will now manage to achieve its climate change goals, with scientists saying coal needs to rapidly disappear from the world’s energy mix to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

RENEWABLES AIM?​

Last year, Prime Minister Imran Khan promised that Pakistan by 2030 would produce 60% of its electrical power from renewable sources.
Currently the country gets 64% of its electricity from fossil fuels, with another 27% from hydropower, 5% from nuclear power and just 4% from renewables such as solar and wind, Gauhar said.

The country has already scrapped plans for two Chinese-funded coal plants - but another seven commissioned as part of the sweeping China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project have gone ahead, and are expected to add up to 6,600 megawatts of capacity to the grid.
China has also funded new renewable energy but at a smaller scale, with six wind farms set to generate just under 400 MW of power, a 100 MW solar project and four hydropower plants expected to produce 3,400 MW by 2027.
CPEC aims to boost road, rail and air transport links and trade between China, Pakistan and other countries in the region, as well as boosting energy production.
Vaqar Zakaria, the head of Hagler Bailly Pakistan, an environmental consultancy firm based in Islamabad, said Pakistan’s coal-heavy power expansion was in line with its own former national aims.
“I think blaming the Chinese may not entirely be fair as setting up projects on local and imported coal was our country policy and priority,” he said.
Officials at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad did not respond to calls and email asking for comment.
As new largely coal-fired plants come online, Pakistan is expected by 2023 to have 50% more power capacity than currently needed.
Because the government must repay loans taken to build the plants and has signed contracts to buy their power, the overcapacity is producing costs “the government has to pay to the power producers under binding contracts, regardless of actual need,” Gauhar said.
“Our fixed-capacity charges have gone through the roof,” he added.

Those costs currently stand at 850 billion rupees ($5.3 billion) a year, but will rise to almost 1,450 billion rupees ($9 billion) a year by 2023 as new largely coal-fired power plants still being built come online, he said.
That is driving up rates consumers pay for power - 30% in the last two years, Gauhar said - a problem likely to continue unless Pakistan can find more buyers for its new generating capacity, such as by boosting manufacturing or pushing use of electric vehicles.
The government plans to decommission some older fossil fuel plants to cut overcapacity, he said - but it also pushing ahead to add new wind, solar and hydropower capacity to the grid to meet its climate goals.
The government is holding talks to renegotiate tariff rates with the country’s independent power producers, including fossil fuel, hydro, wind and solar companies, he said.
Whether it will seek similar rate renegotiations on Chinese-funded plants still in the pipeline, or longer debt repayment periods, remains unclear.

GAINING POWER​

When electricity projects now in the pipeline are completed in the next few years, Pakistan will have about 38,000 MW of capacity, Gauhar said.
But its current summertime peak demand is 25,000 MW, with electricity use falling to 12,000 MW in the winter, he said.
Saadia Qayyum, an energy specialist with the World Bank, said energy over-production was a better problem to have than undersupply as it allowed for growth - but the country needed new ways to use the electricity.

But incentivising electric transport, for instance, will be less than a green solution if a big share of the country’s new electricity is produced by coal plants, energy analysts said.
Gauhar said the government is offering discounted electricity tariffs to industrial customers, to try to lure those now dependent on their own gas-fired plants back to the national grid.
But demand for grid power “is a function of price, availability and reliability”, noted Zakaria, the environmental analyst - and high prices are likely to suppress demand and incentivise power theft, a serious problem in the country.
He predicted high-end residential and commercial customers would end up footing the bill for the excess generation capacity, as industries and agriculture receive power subsidies.
That could mean “paying customers will use less electricity, further worsening the situation”, particularly as more see an economic advantage in buying their own solar panels.
Despite the country’s energy surplus, the World Bank is investing $450 million over the next four years in renewable power in Pakistan, to try to cut the nation’s reliance on fossil fuel imports and lower energy costs, Qayyum said.
Gauhar said Pakistan would need some level of fossil-fuel-powered energy in coming years to help balance “intermittent” sources like solar and wind which do not generate electricity 24 hours a day.
But he said the long-term plan, still being discussed, was to have coal plants contribute no more than 15% of the country’s electricity capacity.

Reporting by Zofeen T. Ebrahim ; editing by Laurie Goering : Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.

Rawalpindi is suffering power cuts ...why ???
 
Rawalpindi is suffering power cuts ...why ???
There are many reasons for it such as a creaking transmission network, poor bill recovery track record and many more. I believe these power cuts are there to minimize losses; however, too many power cuts increase losses so there needs to be a balance. I am not sure if I am correct here and please note that I am not an expert on this topic.

@farok84 Sir can you shed more light on this topic or summon someone who can?
 
This is the generation mix. As long as the power comes from non-imported source, it is a plus. Furnace oil is bad because of that. Natural gas is good, but it is in short supply. All in all, even if 50% of electricity is not from imported fuel, it is an advantage over imported diesel. This is not considering possible higher initial costs.

Electricity generation​

  • Electricity – total installed capacity (FY2021–22): 41,557MW
  • Electricity – installed capacity by source (FY2021–22):
    • Natural gas: 32.3% of total
    • Hydroelectric: 24.7% of total
    • Furnace oil: 14.3% of total
    • Coal: 12.8% of total
    • Nuclear: 8.8% of total
    • Wind: 4.8% of total
    • Solar:1.4% of total
    • Bagasse: 0.9% of total
 

Analysis: Pakistan pays heavy price for excess power generation capacity

Pakistan is embroiled in a fierce debate over whether it was poor management of the power sector and the wider economy that has burdened the country with overcapacity – even as power cuts persist

DJ4JYA-1.jpg

This 2013 photo shows Pakistani technicians fixing an electricity tower in Lahore. Today, the country is in the midst of a debate about the future of its power sector as it confronts huge electricity payments amidst persistent blackouts


Khurram Husain
March 10, 2021

In 2017, Pakistan finally overcame its chronic power shortage and simultaneously broke its decades-long growing addiction to imported furnace oil as the main fuel for power generation. But the feat came at a steep price.

Today, the country is in the midst of a debate about the future of its power sector as it confronts huge electricity payments amidst persistent blackouts due to an inability to operate all its plants and handle the associated costs. Partially as a result of this, the so-called “circular debt” of the power sector has surged from PKR 315 billion (USD 2 billion) in 2015 to beyond PKR 2.2 trillion (USD 12.7 billion) today.

Soaring electricity bills​

Pakistan’s dilemma is a surplus of power generation capacity – a problem it has avoided since the late 1990s. “We are producing much more than we need,” Tabish Gauhar, the prime minister’s special assistant on power, has been telling the media since January.

In his public remarks, he points out that the country cannot afford the new electricity that has been in its system ever since a spate of Chinese-built power plants began to come online since 2017. Gauhar also attributes the bulk of the increased cost to “fixed capacity charges” that he says have “gone through the roof”.

By some estimates, the country has had to pay capacity charges of PKR 850 billion (USD 5.41 billion) a year in the last few years, a figure projected to rise beyond PKR 1.45 trillion (USD 9.2 billion) by 2023 – by when it will be larger than the country’s present peacetime defence budget.

Technically capacity charges are not a budgetary item (they are paid through power bills sent to consumers rather than out of the government’s own budget). The escalating cost of surplus power generation has meant a continuous rise in consumer power tariffs. This has fuelled inflation, eaten away at industrial competitiveness, and necessitated growing resort to government-funded subsidies on power tariffs to shield export-oriented industries from the full brunt of the tariff hikes.

33% of Pakistan’s energy came from hydropower in the first seven months of the 2021 fiscal year.

In Pakistan, the government is the sole buyer of power. Since reforms designed to allow greater room to market forces in the power sector have not advanced in the previous two decades, the bill for these capacity charges either has to be paid by consumers or shared by the government via subsidy payments.

According to Power Minister Omar Ayub, the government paid more than PKR 470 billion (USD 2.99 billion) in power subsidies last year, making it one of the largest heads in current expenditures that have to be curtailed sharply under the terms of the IMF programme that Pakistan is seeking to restart. Only two years ago this amount was closer to PKR 90 billion (USD 573 million).

With the projected growth of capacity payments against surplus power, in the years to come the subsidy bill will rise even more sharply, making it unaffordable for the government and putting it in the unenviable position of having to hike power tariffs even further. This will burden consumers more, fuelling inflation and pricing Pakistani exports out of global markets.

Partly in response to this, the government is trying to persuade the textile export industry to switch away from gas-fuelled captive power plants that they were encouraged to install since the power shortages began to bite after 2008. The government argues that large power consumers like the export industry need to return to the grid for their power requirements. The move has sparked intense pushback from industry, with the argument that grid power is too expensive for them.

In January this year, the government announced a 15% average increase in power tariffs across the board, arguing that the step was necessitated by “compulsory payments” that have come with the new power generation capacity installed in recent years. It also pointed out that the increase is less than a quarter of what was required to offset the cost spiral it is facing as more and more power plants come online.

A crisis foretold​

To some extent this was anticipated, and hotly debated within the previous government. In November 2014, the governments of Pakistan and China signed an agreement “[f]ollowing market-based principles of openness, equality and mutual benefit to develop related energy projects” under which 14 projects were listed as “prioritised” and another seven as “actively promoted”.

In November 2014, the governments of China and Pakistan signed this agreement under which all the power sector investments have been made.

In 2016, as these projects were kicked off, Pakistan’s power generation capacity was just under 20,000 MW, of which almost two thirds was accounted for by hydel and furnace oil-based plants. Two LNG-based plants had just kicked in, adding 1,673 MW of generation to the system. But government projections at the time showed that by 2018, another 13,207 MW was going to be added to the system as the Chinese power plants reached commercial operations. Of this 6,900 MW or slightly more than half would be accounted for by plants running on imported coal and LNG. The next round of capacity expansion would run from 2019 until 2022, adding another 20,380 MW to the system, of which hydel was the largest share at 9,010 MW, followed by nuclear at 4,400 MW and then local coal at 3,300 MW as more power plants came online at the Thar coal fields in the south east of the country. By 2023, when all projects in the pipeline were scheduled to be complete, the country’s total power generation capacity would have more than doubled to reach 53,504 MW.

According to the projections made by the government at the time, Pakistan’s demand for power by June 2018 was projected at 25,961 MW, which assumed that the GDP growth rate would continue at around 6% (in fact growth crashed to near zero in 2018). Its total generation capacity at that point would be 30,938 MW, of which 25,590 MW would be available at any given time. The projections showed a surplus emerging in 2018 even with a growth rate of 6%.

Not only that, the share of power being generated from renewable sources (such as solar photovoltaic, wind and hydel) would have reached nearly 43% of total generation capacity, up from 37% in 2016. Coal-based generation was projected to touch 17% of the total, up from 0.3% in 2016.

With these new additions, Pakistan was on course to not only bridge its chronic shortfall in power generation capacity, but also reach a long sought goal of diversifying its fuel mix away from expensive furnace oil. Under the old power policies of the 1990s, Pakistan’s fuel mix had worsened to the point where almost 70% of all power generation used thermal sources such as furnace oil and gas. As the period of gas shortages began after 2005, reliance on furnace oil only increased, straining foreign exchange reserves and driving up the price of power.

Pakistan's energy generation mix​

First 7 months of the 2021 fiscal year

1673642159271.png

Source: Arif Habib Ltd • *RLNG = Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas

The fuel mix for Pakistan’s power sector has changed profoundly after the Chinese funded power projects started coming online in 2017. Prior to this, the country relied overwhelmingly on furnace oil and gas to meet its power generation needs. In the first seven months of the current fiscal year, by contrast, 5% of its total power has been generated using furnace oil.

Under the new capacity expansion plan agreed with the Chinese, the share of furnace oil-based generation was projected to decline to 11% of the total by 2022, by which time all the projects were supposed to have commenced commercial operation.

But concerns began to mount within the government about the impact these capacity additions would have on the fiscal account, as well as the foreign exchange requirement under increased imports of LNG and coal.

The same projections, made in 2016 by the power division, showed capacity payments more than doubling by 2018.

Internal documents within the power division showed that capacity payments that stood at PKR 272 billion in 2015, or approximately 30% of total generation cost, would rise sharply to PKR 630.8 billion by 2018, or almost 50% of the total generation cost. That figure was hit in the year 2019 instead, and according to the power minister, is projected to rise to PKR 1.455 trillion by 2023.

The power sector regulator, Nepra, however, provides a more complex picture for the spiraling costs that are weighing on power generation. In its latest annual report, for example, Nepra says cost of generation is increasing due to multiple factors. These included mismanagement by the distribution companies, non-availability of LNG for the more efficient, newer plants, excessive levies and surcharges on grid power to aid the government’s revenue effort and transmission constraints in some newer plants, among others.

Power interrupted​

The Chinese capacity expansion may have helped overcome power generation shortfalls in Pakistan, but more chronic problems of a creaking transmission network, poor bill recovery track record as well as keeping emissions under check have remained in place.

Members of the previous government under whom these power plants were commissioned argue that their projections were based on continuing 6% to 7% growth rates in the economy. With the coming of the new government in 2018, the growth rate plunged to below 2%, and went negative in 2020 as Covid-19 lockdowns swept the country.

This year’s growth rate is projected to be 1.5% according to the IMF, or up to 2.5% as per the government’s projections. “You don’t factor in recessions when making power sector capacity expansion plans,” said a bureaucrat who worked under the previous government’s power team, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the heightened political sensitivities that have enveloped Pakistan’s energy conversation.

Today, Pakistan is embroiled in a fierce debate over whether it was poor planning or bad management of the power sector, and the wider economy, that has burdened the country with excess power generation capacity. What is harder to debate, however, is the mounting bill.

 
How about an underground sewage system and waste management with weekly garbage collections.

Buying a bunch of buses and calling it a win. These clowns think its still the 70s and nobody seen a bus before:lol:
 
How about an underground sewage system and waste management with weekly garbage collections.

Buying a bunch of buses and calling it a win. These clowns think its still the 70s and nobody seen a bus before:lol:
These clowns deserve all the bashing in the world but your criticism here is ridiculous. Public transport is far more important than waste management, especially in Karachi. Of course, this doesn't mean that there shouldn't be proper waste management in the city but to say that waste management is more important than public transport in a megalopolis like Karachi is insane. A city like Karachi should have 4-5 metro trains operating on different routes. My Lahore also needs at least 2 more metro trains. If only this maggot Dar spent billions on building more public transport instead of wasting it on pegging Rupee to the Dollar.
 
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