KARACHI, Jan 23: Faced with galloping energy deficit with serious threat to industrial production and civilian life style in the growing urbanized settlements, the government would soon announce renewable energy policy to address the growing power needs of the country which were going up by 10 percent each year.

This was stated by the Federal Minister for Water and Power Liaquat Ali Jatoi while launching environment-friendly project by a Turkish firm near Jhimpir. The one million dollar project would become operative this year and produce 100 megawatts through wind turbines.

Mr Jatoi said the electricity demand was growing up by 10 per cent each year while significant foreign investment was being made in the development of ports, hotel industry, sugar mills, and cement factories. Hence, there was a need for enhancing power production to meet the growing demand. He said the government had initiated several big, medium and small scale projects based on coal, hydel power and solar energy.

He claimed that 11 companies had provided the government bank guarantees to launch their projects in Pakistan. In this regard, five agreements were signed with Orient ad Saphire company which would generate 250 MW electricity, he said.

Concerned about the persistent power shortage in Karachi, Mr Jatoi acknowledged that there was load shedding on about half an hour because the KESC’s own production and availability of power from other sources was not enough to meet the demand.

He said the government had desired that KESC privatization should be a success for which the government had given two subsidies to the utility — one of Rs1.3 billion and the other of Rs2 billion to meet its requirement. Nevertheless, consumers were asked to conserve energy for enabling the utility to tide of the difficult times.

He underlined the need for investing in renewable energy on which the government had withdrawn income tax, wealth tax and custom duty.

He said work had been initiated on installation of a new 132KW transmission line for Thatta and a new grid station would be constructed between Jhimpir and Nooriabad.

The federal minister, who performed the ground breaking of the project on Monday, said the government finally opted for making use of the wind power and the project was manifestation of the government’s commitment to provide basic civic facilities, especially electricity to people in every nook and corner of the country.

Turkey’s Zorlu Engineering has been given the contract. Consul General of Turkey and executives of the company were also present on the occasion.

He said the windmill projects had been initiated for production of cheap electric power under Alternate Energy Board. About 5,000 acres had been allocated to three companies for installation of three windmill units in the hilly areas of Jhimpir.

These units would be constructed at an outlay of $100 million and would be commissioned within one year. He claimed that each unit would produce 50 megawatts that would enlighten several villages in the area.

He said besides producing cheap electricity, the projects would provide job opportunities to the local people and give a boost to the construction of schools, hospitals, roads and other development schemes.

The government had conducted extensive studies on the wind power, particularly in Balochistan and coastal areas of the country as the experts saw great potentials of generating energy through rotar blades along the coast.

In the past small wind generators were used rarely for professional application because they lacked in effective safety systems. But now in the developed countries, the wind power coupled with solar power and computerized system can be very effecting in generating several hundred megawatt of electricity for the energy deficient Karachi and at the same time reducing pollution.