Pakistan Falling Short of Meeting the Targets Set in the UNSDG for 2030

Originally
published in Renewable
Energy Magazine on March 9, 2020, the article reflects on how Pakistan
is struggling to meet the energy targets set in the United Nations’ Sustainable
Development Goals (UNSDGs) for 2030, which aim at ensuring universal access to
affordable, reliable and modern energy services, increasing substantially the
share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, and doubling the global rate
of improvement in energy efficiency. The article is written by Naila Saleh,
Research Officer at IPS.

Energy lies at the
heart of both the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris
Agreement on Climate Change. SDG 7 is aimed at “ensuring universal
access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services; increasing
substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix;
and doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency’. The
goal was also prioritized in national SDGs framework of Pakistan and put
in the priority list.

Is Pakistan on track to achieve the SDG goal 7? Looking at the bigger picture, massive projects of around 12,230 MW cumulative capacity were incorporated during 2013-18 under the mega project ‘China Pakistan Economic Corridor’. The added capacity in the supply network also substantially narrowed down the decades-old power deficit—some of the worst power outages globally. Subsequently, a notable achievement for the country was reaching 100% urban electrification in the year 2017.

Further, around 28,630 villages were electrified during the same period. Despite this progres, 50 million people today still live without electricity. In parallel, though the added capacity and improvements in electricity access helped ease the bottlenecks at generation nevertheless the constraints in transmission and distribution networks forced under utilization of available generation capacities—curtailment of power supplied by conventional fuel and renewable power plants. In addition, the increasing energy prices—a bi-product of external and internal factors such as reliance on imported fuels and aggressive capacity additions during 2013-18—has overburdened end-users.Given the national income per capita of $1,497 and the global average of over 3,000 KWh consumed per individual each year, on average around 20% of Pakistani individual’s income is spent on electricity consumption,

Advancing electrification is futile if those it serves to connect to
the grid can’t afford the tariff. Finally, despite the rapidly expanding
generation capacity, little progress has been made in moving beyond
dependency on fossil fuel. The power mix is certainly changing—with
oil-based power generation planned to be phased out over the next few
years—but against its decline, share of imported gas and coal are
continuously on the rise. So though the energy mix is evolving, yet it
remains skewed toward fossil fuels with negligible emphasis on VRE
uptake.

To summarize the ongoing trajectory, the energy sector still suffers from extant access gaps, unreliable power supply, misconstrued power mix and rising cost of energy—collectively posing significant barriers for revival of the collapsing sector. Strong urban-rural chasm exists in electrification progression.Rural electrification remains an area of particular concern for the country where it stands merely at 55% also registering acontinuous negative growth since 1998 resulting from population growth outpacing the incremental growth in electricity access. Above all, the asynchrony on several indices of SDG 7—universal, affordable, clean and efficient energy—is further perplexing. The abrupt additions in generation capacity in recent years have spiraled up capacity payments of electrification making serious affordability challenges—once again reflecting shortsightedness of relevant public authorities.  Further, the new capacity additions are not only largely devoid of SDG 7.2 (increasing the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030) rather heavily reliant on coal—in sharp contrast to the stated goal.So not only the import dependency has deepened with these additions but also the country has largely missed on its win-win prospect of harnessing the synergies between sustainable energy development and climate protection.

Pakistan must step up efforts for harnessing the cross sectoral
interlinkages and synergies toward an equitable and just energy
transition.  Fixation on merely improving electrification
reliability—which so far remained the mainstream discourse of the
outgoing government—would not aid in getting traction of the goal. The
country is already on the brink of suffering devastating and
irreversible changes,falling among the most vulnerable geographic region
to climate change.There remains a need for dramatic advancement in
harnessing clean energy sources as continual reliance on fossil fuels
and the coal-based editions for energy sector growthis not only putting
millions of individuals’ quality of life in jeopardy but also creating
import dependency and affordability challenges. In relation to rural
electrification, there may be a special advantage for“leapfrogging” i.e.
 “jumping over” the stages through which other countries have passed
and climbing the “energy ladder” by moving directly to clean
technologies for electrification. Centralized solutions alone would not
provide results and achieving the goal will require placing a larger
chunk of resources into off-grid and mini-grid solutions—enabling
efficient access in hard to reach and limited access geographical zones.
In seeking to ensure guaranteed access to affordable, reliable,
sustainable and modern energy for all, Pakistan’s needs to embrace a
more sustainable framework – a cliché that is quite fitting. We either
embark on a fast energy revolution and make more even growth
simultaneously toward several indices of SDG 7 or we continue
business-as-usual and forget about fulfilling the goal.