Pakistan To Build 300 MW Solar Power Plant In Gwadar Instead Of Coal Based Plant

The economic downturn and balance of payment crisis can have a noble effect. In Pakistan, the Power Division now wants to abandon the planned 300 MW coal power plant at port city of Gwadar and instead build a solar power plant of the same capacity in order to relieve itself from importing more coal.

 

The imported coal based power facility was planned under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in 2016. But the project never took off.

According to reports, Pakistan is looking to take up the issue at various CPEC forums with China. Previously, the Power Division Minister of Pakistan Khurram Dastgir Khan had held in the past that the government wanted to replace the Chinese power plant at Gwadar with a solar one of the same capacity. The new solar power plant will be built by China.

The minister expressed the intention of the government to ban new power plants that were to be run on imported fuel. Pakistan wants to have new generation capacity that can employ the locally produced fuels; the new plant will now run on Thar coal, hydel, wind and solar. Nuclear power plants will continue to be developed.

Khurram Dastgir Khan had also informed that the existing imported coal-based power plants would now employ local coal. They make a total of 3,960 MW and these include the plants in Port Qasim, Sahiwal and China Hub. Each of the three has a capacity of 1,320 MW of electricity.

The Import Bill of the Islamic country has already touched a massive $20 billion in the first 11 months of the last financial year that too when the rupee has taken an unimaginable plunge against the dollar which adds to the woes. Pakistan has signed agreements with Iran under which it presently imports upto 70 MW of electricity from Iran and may import 100 MW more by the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023.

The renewable energy development in Pakistan has been on the backseat for long. Until September, 2021, Pakistan has added just 1,700 MW of solar and wind energy. It has a national target of 12,900 MW of solar and wind energy by the end of this decade. This implies, Pakistan has now to add 11,200 MW in the coming eight years. However, this is even as the country has failed to add any utility scale solar pipeline in the past three years.