Muhammad Qasim Khokhar

“Sustainable energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, increased social equity and an environment that allows the world to thrive,” said Ban ki moon. Energy is a backbone of civilization and whatsoever has been achieved by the journey of civilization is through energy. Humans have been harnessing more and more forms of energy and making the life on planet better. But lack of respect for this bone of human civilization by masses, some industries, irresponsible commercial activities is threatening the human life itself.  Pakistan is rapidly coming out of this energy crisis but we cannot afford slipping into this vicious cycle again. Our energy needs are multiplying due to increasing population, urbanization and modernization. So what is the solution?

Mere bashing of govt, DISCOS and other relevant persons- whether individual or legal would create difference? Let us cool our feet and come with realistic answer.  It is No.

The reply needs much broader and deeper introspection and not surface scratching.

Total crisis of Energy in about 6000MW. Now we analyze it as under.

Let us visit the globe and look at the pattern of rising from the bed and going to bed- Japan, Korea, China, America, Germany, France. In every developed country, commercial markets close within 2 hours of sunset. Hardly bars, pharmacies remain open. But we see out markets hum with commercial activities till midnight and even later on in Mega polis of Karachi and Metropolis of Lahore and others. There exists a conservation potential of 600MW if we close markets within one hour of sunset. Sindh Government under its new Chief Minister has taken a decision to close shops at 7 pm and marriage halls at 10pm but how this decision is implemented is yet to be seen due to cultural inertia. The implementation can become relatively smooth if an alternative is provided to late night shops to switch to solar or energy efficient technologies like LED Lights, 3 Star Labeled fans, Inverter based ACs, Inverters instead of UPS etc to compensate for their over-consumption or irresponsibility.

Now let’s look at the picture from flip side. Walk through markets of Karachi and you will find hardly any shop open before 1:00 pm in the afternoon. While our holy book says: “And He created night for peace and comfort”.

Late going to bed not only contributes to energy woes but is making people psycho causing coronary diseases and is carcinogenic in nature in addition to disturbing education of children.

      Now we see another area. There are more than 1.1 million tube well connections only in Punjab which include 200,000 on distribution companies or electric pumps/motors. Electricians when repair them do not use standard wires of copper, rather use sub-standard wires of aluminium. If they use copper, they use sub-standard gauges. And all of it is mischievously conceived. Electricians think if they use sub-standard material, motors/pumps will burn earlier forcing farmers visit their shops and pay earlier and frequent. While this is playing havoc with farmers economy, it is wasting national productivity and energy lowering GNP/GDP of the country. Further there are substandard pipes and specifications. Depth of well is more than required resulting into more energy consumed in water pumps. The potential of tube well sector is around 800MW.

Conservation at Homes

Now we come to conservation at home as “Charity begins at home”. We have not trained our successive generations to conserve. Rather conservation is taboo in many sub-cultures and is looked down upon while injunction of holy book is “And do not expend more than required”.

We see our streetlights on in the broad light. Our air conditions, fans, lights, desktop, laptops remain “ON” due to our attitude of indifference. The situation is frightening in places where electricity bills are to be paid by someone else like educational institutions, offices and hotels.

In fact this is crisis of our attitude- as manufacturers of appliances, as representatives of trade or market associates, as public office holders, as teacher, as parents and as policy makers especially general masses as 9 percent of hazardous gases are produced from consumer use of petroleum and industry accounts for only 10%.

Israel faces scarcity of water like Pakistan but they start teaching their children from class 3 how to conserve water. We do opposite. Pakistan as one of few countries of the world where clothes are washed in running tap water consuming up to 300 litres instead of bucket which consumes 60 litres, shave is done in running tap water wasting 6 litres instead of mug consuming half litres, cars are washed daily by running pipe water wasting 600 litres instead of air pressure pipes consuming lesser.

All this is despite we are facing acute shortage as per capita availability of water has been reduced to 925 cubic meters viz 5600  cubic meters at time of inception of Pakistan.

This over consumption is not only playing havoc with energy but is a rap with resources of mother earth. It is overstretching capacity of earth and is increasing entropy of universe and is biggest threat to survival of mankind itself.

A recent study sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center , after analyzing five risk factors i.e population, climate, water, agriculture and energy, confirms that after few decades “everything we hold dear will come to a collapse ”  because of "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"

An interesting crisis of attitude is we pay energy bills every month but hardly see the back page where valuable information how to conserve energy is printed. This crisis of attitude is more deeper with affluent and educated ones. We have seen by our experience and research that more educated lot wastes more resources and energy. One reason is their casual attitude due to affordability and second reason is their better access to sophisticated equipment consuming more secondary source of energy e.g. AC’s, geysers, desktops, floodlights.

Another flaw in attitude is that affording and affluent lot is not adapting to efficient technology due to casual attitude despite impressive payback periods. For example affluent are not replacing conventional spilt AC’s with inverter ones like GREE, Daikin etc, energy savers with LED lights despite threat of cancer, geysers with solar geysers, windows with double glazed windows, UPS with solar inverters and partial shifting of load on renewable technologies like solar and wind. We must acknowledge that each watt saved, each extra light switched off , will light the hut of another poor man or will give another Rupee to a poor man in shape of employment or opportunity as more than 99% of the energy poor lives in developing world-the largest share is with South Asia. Only in Pakistan, 71.1 million people live without electricity which is 5% of world’s electricity poors. One Megawatt is better than 3 Megawatts generated as it does not produce hazardous emissions and has no further need of capex for laying its wheeling infrastructure.

Now another issue has emerged, that this attitude of us is isolating Pakistan’s from its friends as their conscious citizenry is constantly exerting pressure on governments and aid institutions that if Pakistan’s public is not helping itself, why the taxpayers money should be spent on Pakistan. They are fully aware of our inefficiencies . Integrated Energy Sector recovery report and plan by friends of democratic Pakistan reads as “Out of the 17 million residential electricity customers in Pakistan, 38% have refrigerators (with a 67% improvement potential), 38% have water pumps (with a 50% improvement potential) and 15% have air conditioning (with a 40% improvement potential).”

The idea is we must transform our attitudes and behaviors. Energy Efficiency Culture needs to be adopted as we are emerging economy and energy consumption of emerging economies is increasing at 3.2% (Pakistan is 3.99%) around the world viz mature economies which are not worried about their energy issue as their growth rate of energy needs is only 1.1%. But they are more concentrating on efficiency and thus we see Germnay getting the highest score on Energy efficiency score board (65) and unfortunately, us , the developing economies are least bothered.

Energy Efficiency is “fifth fuel” and the most reliable in a world where cheap oil is ending rapidly either due to depletion of reserves or due to conflicts and natural catastrophes e.g we see Persian Gulf housing 65% of proven oil reserves is suffering from geo-political conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya etc and we See Katrina storm disrupted oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. Regarding depletion of reserves, we have already siren call around, as oil production has been falling in 33 of the worlds 48 largest oil producing countries including half of OPEC. Production from existing wells is falling at 5%.

This phenomenon will catalyze poverty as more out of the kitty would be spent on oil and more fertile lands will be diverted towards biofuels leaving lesser area for staple food crops which in turn raise prices of commodities making life difficult for poor and middle income groups. At government level, balance of payments of oil importing countries like Pakistan would be hampered pressurizing exchange rate , making imports costlier and exports cheaper , thus reducing net income of the nations.

Wasting a single watt of energy is adding harmful gases to the environment right from its production  to transmission to distribution and consumption. Fossil fuels are the biggest culprit. These gases called Green house gases have enveloped the earth and entrap sun light which is converted into heat and thus global average temperature has risen  by 0.5 C in one century though there is a threat of increase by 4.5 C by the end of the century. Thus we see sever heat waves in moderate temperature cities like Karachi killing thousands in few days. The level of GHG has increased to 430ppm from 280ppm CO2 equivalent. In order to avoid catastrophe, it should be below 450ppm-550ppm CO2e. As a result of this crisis of human attitude ,we see disasters have increased four times in last 20 years as per world’s leading NGO Oxfam. The number of people affected from disasters have risen by 68%, from an average of 174 million a year in 1985-1994 to 254 million a year from 1995-2004. The threat is gigantic as coastal areas will face erosion and high tidal action and sub-merging. Thus fauna and flora , sweet water and agri lands may vanish in these areas. Bangla Desh will be affected the most as 70 million people will become homeless.

WHO says this wasting attitude is causing five million extra cases of illness a year and more than 150,000 extra deaths . The need of the hour is that each individual should take moral leadership. A radical change is needed in attitudes towards environment. Energy-conservation is not a priority but survival antidote coupled with applying environment friendly energy resources like solar and wind producing 0.1 and 0.02 Kg of CO2 /KWh.

The writer is a senior policy maker and is MD of Punjab Energy Efficiency & Conservation