Weekly Intelligence Brief

Exploring renewable energy resources in Pakistan

8 May 2008

On the occasion of the 38th Earth Day, Pakistan is witnessing a serious power crisis due to the depletion of conventional sources of energy. The need for exploring alternative, environmental-friendly, and renewable energy resources has therefore become more inevitable.

Experts believe that global warming and deteriorating environmental conditions are adversely affecting Pakistan’s water resources. The rivers are dying out at a slow but steady pace and with them, Pakistan’s chances of producing cheap hydropower are diminishing as well.

Although huge coal reserves that can be used for power generation and for resolving the prevalent power crisis have been discovered lately in Sindh, but mining these resources requires immense amounts of investment. Moreover, this is by no means an environment-friendly solution to the problem.

The most appropriate answer, according to some experts, is exploring renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar and even tidal energy. These not only have huge power-generation potential, but are also extremely environment-friendly and are successfully being used for electricity-generation in various countries of the world.