Self-inflicted energy crisis |
In the Karimabad valley of Chitral, Abdul Rahim's monthly electricity bill came to 1,500 rupees. The power comes from a community hydropower project run by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) in Pakistan's Hindu Kush mountains. Some 20 kilometers down the valley, families on the national grid pay between 6,000 and 7,000 rupees for the same month. In that short stretch of road, Pakistan's energy crisis stops being a mystery.
The Economist? recently ranked Pakistan among the world's biggest losers from the Gulf energy shock. Fossil fuels account for more than 30% of its total import bill, nearly 90% of that oil sourced from the Middle East, making energy shocks a direct trigger for current account crises. We saw this after the Ukraine war. We're seeing it again after the Iran war. That chronic vulnerability points to a deeper question: how did a country with 60,000 MW of untapped hydropower potential, Chinese investment on its doorstep, and rivers,?sun?and wind in abundance, end up?this exposed??The answer?isn't?resource scarcity.?Political?economy already determined the investment – and it chose wrong.??
When China arrived with CPEC, a $60 billion infrastructure programme with energy at its centre, Pakistan had a once-in-a-generation opportunity. CPEC's first phase poured more than $33 billion into the energy sector. Nearly two-thirds of that generation capacity went to coal. Coal dominated CPEC not because it was the best energy solution or Pakistan lacked alternatives but because coal served a different purpose entirely.
Nawaz Sharif won the 2013 election on a promise to end load-shedding -........