ISLAMABAD: The government is working on a 25-year integrated energy plan to meet the country’s future needs, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Petroleum Nadeem Babar said on Friday.

“We are working on a complete integrated energy plan for the next 25 years with an aim to ensure availability of electricity, oil and gas to consumers at affordable rates and in sufficient quantity,” the Petroleum Division quoted Mr Babar saying at a seminar.

He underlined the need for overcoming the energy shortages, providing commodities at affordable rates and stopping their wastages. “Make energy cheaper and consumption will double,” he said, adding that this strategy would give a substantial boost to industrial sector and economic activities in the country.

Under its ease of doing business plan, the SAPM said the government had removed a number of bureaucratic hurdles to facilitate private sector in the energy sector. He said the government intended to reduce its footprint in the energy sector by encouraging private sector to compete government sector entities.

During the last 16 months, the government had taken a number of steps which would have positive impact on the energy sector in the coming years, he said. “We are not realising these measures right now. We have been living in the past and denying the present…but we have to move the energy sector where it has to be,” he added.

The SAPM said the government had decided that it would not continue to increase its footprint in the LNG industry and with that mind it would go ahead with the open access to the pipelines and terminals. “There is no bar on setting up of LNG terminals by the private sector,” he said.

The government would support the private sector players if they had buyers, suppliers and financial muscles, he said and urged the participants, “We create the environment… you do the business and compete the public sector entities.”

Commenting on the future energy outlook, he said there would be a drastic increase in the electricity in the overall energy pie in next 10 to 20 years, stressing the need to adopt a holistic approach. He also highlighted the role of renewable energy to meet the country’s electricity and petroleum sector requirements.

He said traditional coal technology had gone out of fashion and over the next 20 years oil would be out of fashion and gas will stay in business. During next 30 to 40 years, the gas would most depend on fossil fuels, which supplemented the variability of renewable energy. However, battery technology can change that dimension. Battery technology will see major developments in next 10 years, he said.

Published in Dawn, February 1st, 2020