February 14, 2008	Thursday	Safar 06, 1429

RAWALPINDI, Feb 13: While the shortage of gas is felt across the country, a new report of Asian Development Bank says Pakistan’s gas distribution system is ageing and is suffering from high technical losses of 25 to 30 per cent against the industry standard of five per cent.

Losses could be eliminated by replacing medium- and low-pressure pipes with more efficient and corrosion-free pipes, the bank suggested.

The ADB in a technical assistance report says a more efficient gas distribution system would result in significant national savings up to $580 million per year, and increased use of cleaner fuel by more domestic, industrial and commercial consumers.

Natural gas accounted for 43 billion cubic metres, which is half of the country’s primary energy supply in 2006.

The ADB report has been prepared for the provision of a technical assistance (worth $600,000) on a grant basis to Pakistan for preparing the Sustainable Energy Efficiency Development Programme by the Planning Commission. The technical assistance is estimated to cost $700,000.

The government will finance the remainder $100,000. The technical assistance will design a suitable programme proposal that supports government efforts to establish an enable policy and business environment for energy efficiency, and to provide immediate financing of priority projects.

The public and domestic sectors consume more than 60 per cent of the country’s energy. The government is looking for more efficient utilisation and conservation measures for the public sector and is eager to procure and adopt energy efficient technology in its operations and introduction of energy-efficient building codes, says the ADB report.

The domestic sector currently uses 45 per cent of the power supply. The most effective way to expedite the use of efficient compact fluorescent lamps by domestic consumers is to inject a large volume of such lamps into the market at a low price. This approach has been successful in several countries, where it has immediately reduced customers’ monthly power bills.

Preliminary analysis suggests that the introduction of 15 million high-quality compact fluorescent lamps into Pakistan’s domestic market would save customers $78 million over the lifetime of those bulbs with approximate life of 2 years.

During 2001-2006, primary energy supply increased 5.4 per cent per year. Meanwhile, consumption of electricity rose at an average annual rate of 6.8 per cent, natural gas by 10.4 per cent, liquefied petroleum gas by 17.6 per cent, and coal by 22.8 per cent.

Electricity use, in particular, is growing robustly across all sectors recording a 10.2 per cent overall jump in 2005-2006, while generation increases lagged at 9.3 per cent during the same period.

Thus, the country faced serious peak electricity supply shortfalls of 1,500-2,000 megawatts during the summers of 2006 and 2007, necessitating significant forced outages (or load shedding) that curtailed economic activity and delivery of social services.

System-wide transmission and distribution losses remain high at 24.8 per cent of dispatched power. Despite government efforts to electrify all villages, about 45 per cent of the population still does not have access to grid-supplied electricity. A crisis in the energy sector has been looming for the past two years, reveals the report.

The energy efficiency assessment conducted under ADB’s Energy Efficiency Initiative determined that Pakistan has a large and untapped energy efficiency market. It identifies several energy efficiency improvement opportunities in gas distribution (supply side) and in the government and residential sectors (demand side) that can be tapped into.