By Ajmal Khan Yousafzai
ISLAMABAD: Punjab government has a plan to shift all public sector electricity connection on solar energy in near future to promote clean and green energy vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan in the country.
Officials said on Tuesday that the provincial government had shifted 10,500 government schools on solar energy and now all the basic health units were being switched to solar energy in next stage.
They said that the Punjab government has also a plan to shift all public sector universities on solar system besides converting all public connections on solar energy. They said that Zhenfa Pakistan New Energy Company was setting up 100MW solar power plants in Layyah district, which would further expedite economic activities in the remote area.
Meanwhile, the federal government also planned to open the energy market for the competitive bidding process to be initiated this year soon after the approval of Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan.
Renewable energy technologies have matured during the last one decade and Pakistan has started harnessing the immense potential of alternative and renewable energy resources available in the country, however, the development of RE has remained slow owing to no targets set in the initial policy and frequent policy level decision, they said.
They said the government has now announced a new policy that sets a target of 20% RE capacity by 2025 and 30% by 2030.
“Overall, the government intends to have a share of more than 60% coming from clean technologies by 2030”, they added.
The ARE Policy 2019 envisages development of ARE projects in a well-coordinated and planned manner with active participate of all key public sector stakeholders.
Earlier on Monday it was reported that the government had devised a comprehensive strategy to completely shift towards green energy from expensive thermal energy mostly based on imported fuel in the country.
Under the comprehensive strategy, the share of green energy (Renewable Energy) would be enhanced to 25 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030.
They said Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) government had inked expensive agreements in power sector for their personal gains resulting huge loss to the national exchequer.
The energy mix had been badly disturbed by the past government as 70 per cent of the energy was being generated through imported expensive fuel.
