BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan (AlertNet) – Razia Yousaf is one of the brightest students in Bahawalpur, but she struggles to study in her darkened home when frequent power cuts strike.

Now the 10^th-grade student has been awarded a solar-powered lamp by the Punjab provincial government in recognition of her outstanding academic performance in examinations last year. Yousaf hopes the new lamp will light the way to her goal of becoming a journalist.

“The solar-powered lamp is really a great help in finishing my schoolwork, particularly after sunset,” she explains, sitting at the table where she studies in her family’s mud-brick home in Azam colony, some 500 km (310 miles) south-east of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.

The country’s Punjab provincial government is trying to tackle one of the unintended consequences of growing power cuts in Pakistan – the poor performance of students who cannot study at home – with its Ujala Programme (“Programme for Light”), launched last December to help high-scoring students like Yousaf in grades 9 to 12.

After attending school, the 15-year-old spends the afternoons working with her mother and two sisters on the family’s two-hectare (five-acre) vegetable field. She only has time to complete her homework in the evening, after sunset.

“I am happy that the solar lamp has eased my study and doing school assignments has become easier,” Yousaf says, smiling.

GROWING ENERGY CRISIS

Pakistan is facing an energy crisis due to its rising population, the effects of climate change, and a precarious security situation that discourages investment in conventional and renewable energy sources, say government and development officials.

According to the UN Development Programme in Pakistan, about 38 percent of the country’s estimated 180 million people lack access to electricity, including 97 percent of rural households.

The growing energy deficit has led to the closure of thousands of businesses and manufacturing plants, hobbling the economy and leaving many people unemployed and destitute. The State Bank of Pakistan estimates that four million job opportunities have been lost since 2008 due to the country’s energy problems.

Over half of Bahawalpur district, where Razia Yousuf lives, is not connected to the national power grid. Even those homes with power may only receive six hours of supply each day during the summer months, when the grid is overloaded by demand from air conditioners.

The Ujala Programme aims to help. In January, more than 15,000 solar lamps were distributed to students at government schools in Bahawalpur division, which comprises three districts.  

Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan, secretary of the Punjab energy department, said that the government plans to distribute 200,000 lamps across the province’s 36 districts by April this year, at a cost of 2.5 billion Pakistani rupees (about $26 million).

Each solar lamp kit, which costs 12,000 rupees (about $120), consists of a 30-watt solar photovoltaic cell, a battery and a mobile phone charger. It can light a 40-watt bulb for 18 hours on a 10-hour charge from sunlight.

SENDING A MESSAGE

“Promotion of usage of solar energy among these students, who are future drivers of the country, will clearly send a message to them that in Pakistan renewable energy has potential,” said Punjab’s chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, at a ceremony for distributing the lamps in January at Islamia University in Bahawalpur.

Sharif explained that the long-term goal of the Ujala programme is to raise awareness of alternative energy resources among the province’s poorer residents, in order to reduce their dependency on the national power grid and improve environmental conditions through clean energy technology. 

According to a report by the Petroleum Institute of Pakistan, an industry body, primary energy consumption in Pakistan has grown by almost 80 percent over the past 15 years.

Despite a daily demand of 16,000 megawatts (MW) of power, less than 11,000 MW is generated, two-thirds of it through fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, according to the federal ministry of water and power.

Pakistan imports around 80 percent of the oil it uses, and Asim Hussain, Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, recently warned that the country’s domestic oil and gas supplies will be exhausted by 2030. Hussain stressed the need to explore renewable energy to meet rising needs.

Despite the country’s renewable energy potential, Pakistan produces less than 10 MW daily of its electricity from solar and wind sources, according to the country’s Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB). The board’s studies estimate the total solar power potential to be 2.9 million MW per year. The country could also produce around 346,000 MW annually through wind power.

POLITICAL INSTABILITY

This vast potential remains untapped because of political instability, low investment in renewable energy technology and research, and poor adaptation of technology to local needs, experts say.

“Foreign investment in promotion of renewable energy … is not likely to come if the law and order situation remains the same,” admitted Arif Alauddin, chief executive of AEDB.

Despite this, a few collaborative projects with countries that have advanced renewable energy technologies have pushed ahead.

The Punjab government, for instance, has allocated 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) of land in the Cholistan area for a solar energy project, according to Javed Akhtar, head of the Cholistan Development Authority. The provincial government has given 1,000 acres (400 hectares) to companies from Germany and the United States for solar power projects.

The German renewable energy company CAE announced it will invest almost 13 billion rupees ($132 million) to build the first solar panel manufacturing facility in Pakistan in the coming months.

The aim is to bring down the cost of solar energy, officials said.

“We are aiming to make sure that any person who installs the house solar system will have monthly instalments (to pay for the system) equal to their current monthly electricity bill,” said Shahzada Khurram, director of the company.

The federal government removed custom duties on the import of solar power materials at the end of February to promote the use of alternate energy sources.

Now it needs to begin requiring the use of solar power in some situations, said Mahjabeen Khan, programme manager at the Society for Conservation and Protection of the Environment, a nongovernmental organisation based in Karachi that has established solar model energy systems for poor households in southern coastal areas in Sindh province.

“The Pakistani government should legislate to make compulsory the use of solar energy for electricity generation in development projects and specific residential use to meet energy shortages,” Khan said. “It should also stop further extension of the transmission lines and put the entire funds meant for village electrification to solar use,” she said.