Energy Shortage now is a global crisis for many countries in the world including Pakistan. Pakistan, one of the high rapid development developing countries now is in the worst energy crisis in its history (Kazmi, 2013). The high speed increasing of its economy and population absolutely demand a large energy supply, but the problem is that the storage of the energy of the country now can hardly supply the whole country’s energy usage. As AOL News said “Car owns wait for hours to get petrol and gas, cities and villages are lack of electricity for many hours per day, homes can hardly cook without gas.
” The situation is becoming more and more serious in the whole country. Actually, Pakistan’s energy shortage crisis can be tracked back to the 1990s ( Kugelman, 2013); and in the 1970s, the energy crisis was averted once because of the Mangla and Tarbela dams. However, the strong economic growth needs a large mount of energy; no matter how indigenous energy resources do Pakistan have, it is hard to satisfy the soared consumption of energy. For figuring out the good solutions of energy crisis in Pakistan, we’d better to know the effects and causes of the crisis.
It is very obviously to see that the impact of the energy crisis in Pakistan is terrible for almost everywhere during the country: economic, educational, political and etc. As Chung (2013) mentioned, because the lack of electricity, numerous business and factories have to reduce 20 to 25% of their productivity, and the consequence of this can be really bad such as citizens are losing jobs, children are losing their education opportunities and factories are losing their foreign markets and clients, even worse, it may lead economic slowdown or economic contraction on Pakistan.
On the other hand, Pakistan relies on the compressed natural gas (CNG) most and this is an important cause that leads the energy shortage crisis directly on Pakistan. Because the population is increasing so fast, no matter how much gas the government has purchased in, it’s still hard to supply CNG for the whole country, also the negative impact of this is that there’s a inflation on the price of CNG. Besides, according to Leung (2013), the government plays an important role in this crisis.
The poor managements of the government makes a lot of problems in Pakistan such as the government realized the problem but it didn’t take any action to solve the problem, the worse is, the government even made the problems worse. Government always spent money on wrong ways but not to spend the most of money on solving the energy crisis; at last, it seems that government can only make a ration of energy and owe much more money, but this obviously cannot solve the problem and it will keep increasing burden on the citizens.
Hence, for solving the serious energy shortage problem, what could be the possible solutions and what solutions can truly solve the problem permanently or temporarily? One thing now can be sure is that for solving the energy crisis, Pakistan will require political will, additional funding, and new power-generation sources etc. (Kugelman, 2013). One short-term solution as Kugelman (2013) pointed out that Pakistan could request a new loan from International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, except how much will this solution work, it seems that Pakistan now is not willing to get help from IMF at least after the spring’s elections.
In other words, because of the possible political influence from IMF, it’s hard for Pakistan to get new fund from IMF as for now. It means even get loan from IMF is good solution in the additional fund way, it’s not a happy solution for the government’s political will. However, actually for the Pakistan’s situation, even the government doesn’t ask IMF for fund help, it’s still necessary and better to get economic help as soon as possible because even the government itself cannot pay all power bills. New fund can also help Pakistan to import more energy for supplying the demand for a while.
Except the new fund, shifting the energy resource to another one is also a good solution for Pakistan. For this, coal energy seems like the best choice to instead of CNG for Pakistan. Considering Pakistan’s economy situation, like Ebrahim (2012) mentioned, many experts think coal is the alternative for Pakistan because Pakistan cannot afford to be romantic. Hydropower depends on water so it’s seasonally, oil is too expensive, only importing abundant coal is viable because coal is much more cheaper than oil and it’s non-seasonally.
However, although coal energy is a long-term solution for Pakistan to solve the energy problem, it is also a long-term damage for the global environment (Chung, 2013). In this way, Pakistan needs to consider how to balance the solution of the current problem and the cause of the potential crisis in the future. Hopefully coal energy won’t be a dilemma for Pakistan in the future. Meanwhile, besides coal energy, another long-term solution for Pakistan now is to develop more sugar plants to supply electricity.
According to Kazmi (2013), Pakistan has the potential to get electricity from sugar plants across the country especially in rural areas. Sugar mills only use low bagasse to heat boilers; moreover, sugar can also produce ethanol for motor gasoline. This means, if Pakistan starts to use large sugar to be an energy row-material, then it will be helpful for Pakistan to contain oil imports and CNG (Kazmi, 2013). The advantages of sugar are obviously; it can provide Pakistan another new chance to change the situation in a good way, and maybe the only problem for this solution for Pakistan is how to get more places for planting sugar.
In general, like Kugelman (2013) mentioned, Pakistan’s energy problems are deep and complex, and sometimes the crisis is not only about Pakistan itself, other countries could be involved in the problems; thus, for getting better understand of the problem and better solutions for the problem, we still need to find more information. However, as for now about Pakistan, the energy shortage crisis is becoming worse and worse. The impacts of the crisis are negative: people in Pakistan now have a very hard and challenging life, economy may suspend or even reverse, government can hardly control the situation etc.
So far, due to Pakistan’s complex situation, sugar seems like the best solution for Pakistan to solve the problem, it’s cheap and easy to get, it can provide both gas and electricity energy for the whole country, and it can help government to balance the imports and the fund during the crisis. Hopefully, Pakistan could solve the energy shortage crisis and change its hard situation peacefully and quickly.
Reference “Documentary Report on Pakistan’s Energy Crisis. ” Aol. on. N. p. , n. d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. http://on.aol. com/video/documentary-report-on-pakistans-energy-crisis-517262213. Chung. SK(Oct. 04 2013). The effect of the energy crisis of Pakistan. Brigham Young University Hawaii. Leung. KC(Oct. 11 2013). The cause of energy shortage at Pakistan. Brigham Young University Hawaii. Kugelman Michael(March 13, 2013). Pakistan’s Energy Crisis. The National Bureau of Asian Research. http://www. nbr. org/research/activity. aspx? id=323#. UmtfNRYeadB Kazmi Shabbir H(August 31, 2013). Pakistan’s Energy Crisis. The Diplomat.
