OUR energy crisis is the result of our lack of energy efficiency. It can be seen all around us. Some of its relevant examples are as follows:

— Inefficient buildings: Since buildings consume nearly one-third of the total energy used, one would have thought that the government would ensure an efficient-building design.

Unfortunately, while the world is enforcing energy-efficient design with recognised building energy codes, we are only selling enormous building projects in the guise of ‘green buildings’ but there is no real attempt to conserve energy. How can a building project claim to be ‘green’ when they do not even refer to the requirement of the recognised energy code?

— Inefficient processes: Unfortunately, we did not follow the policy (initiated at the highest level a decade back) which related to gas sanction only for efficient technologies, covering cogeneration systems and efficient combined cycle power plants.

If this policy had been enforced, we would have ensured a high efficiency of gas utilisation, producing many thousands of MW of low-cost power and thus avoiding the present rampant wastage of gas in highly inefficient processes like captive generation without waste heat recovery, direct gas-fired absorption chillers with a low coefficient of performance and conventional boilers for production of steam and hot water.

The co-generation systems explained above are not just ‘fads’. When designed properly, these produce low-cost power to change the entire economics of buildings and industries.

Instead of enforcing the gas policy, explained above, to encourage co-generation in buildings and industries, we are advertising a 30-year-old policy of ‘bagasse-based co-generation for sugar factories’ without realising that bagasse now has a good market for paper production and is not a low-cost ‘waste’.

What we should have encouraged, as the world is doing, is the installation of solar thermal power plants in such applications, with bagasse fuel used only when solar energy is not available. This would allow round-the-year power generation and produce low-cost power and steam during the sugarcane crushing season.

Ainul Abedin

Karachi