ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry has called upon the government to focus on renewable energy as the country has tremendous potential to generate power through these sources. The renewable energy would bring multiple benefits to the economy as it would reduce cost of doing business, promote industrialization, encourage investment, create plenty of new jobs and enhance exports.
Ahmed Hassan Moughal, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that renewable energy sources including wind and solar were getting key focus on the global level as they were sustainable sources of energy at affordable cost. He said the installed capacity of solar and wind power across the world have witnessed over 5000 percent and over 650 percent increase respectively, but in Pakistan due attention has not been paid to this important source of energy as yet despite the fact that our economy has suffered huge losses due to energy shortage.
He said that many European countries were working to replace coal and nuclear power plants with renewables while Germany and Denmark have already achieved the capability of meeting peak-load demand from renewable energy under the right weather conditions. He said even Gulf countries with abundant oil and gas reserves were making big investments in renewables and Saudi Arabia has planned to setup solar and wind energy projects of 9.5 GW by 2023. Similarly, Kazakhstan with plenty of oil and gas reserves was working to produce 50 percent energy from renewables in future.
ICCI President said that China has emerged as the world leader in renewable energy in terms of investment, installed capacity and manufacturing and export of products and Pakistan has good opportunity to learn from China for enhancing the share of renewable energy in its energy mix. He said India has already developed 28GW of wind power and has set a target of 100GW solar energy by 2022 and emphasized that Pakistan should also pay more attention to this vital source of energy.
Ahmed Hassan Moughal said that the government should re-energize the Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB) and accord top priority to renewable energy as renewables offered wide-ranging strategic benefits including provision of cheap & environment friendly energy, industrialization, creation of plenty of new jobs and enhanced economic activities across the whole value chain.
