ISLAMABAD: On Tuesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that the government plans to switch all federal buildings to solar power within the next four months. The goal is to cut the country’s $27 billion fuel import bill, which has been rising quickly.
The prime minister gave details and said that the steps to switch to solar power should be sped up because they had set April 2023 as the deadline for putting this plan into action.
At a solarization conference in Islamabad, the prime minister said that all federal government ministries, departments, authorities, and their branches in the provinces would switch to solar energy right away under the plan.
He said it would be a good example for the other provincial governments to follow, since the federal government wouldn’t have to spend any more money on the process of solarization.
The prime minister also asked all the right people and groups to finish the necessary steps by the end of April so that the schedule could be met.
He said, “Think of it as our political, social, national, and religious duty to get it done as soon as possible.”
The prime minister said that if they took these urgent steps, they would be able to make 300MW to 500MW of low-cost power, which would cut their annual import bill by billions of dollars.
The prime minister promised that the whole thing would be done openly and with the help of a third party.
He also asked the provincial chief ministers to follow the example set by the federal government and instal solar systems in their own provinces. He promised that the federal government would help them with this.
“It is the only way for us to stay together as a country,” he said.
The prime minister said that the country was already on its way to making 10,000MW of solar power, and that the first step would be to connect the federal government buildings.
Also see: $3.5 million raised to make solar panels in the U.S.
After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, fuel and gas prices went through the roof, which hurt the country’s economy. He said that developing countries like Pakistan had to take the most of the hit.
He said that the $27 billion cost of importing fuel was a big problem for countries like Pakistan. He also said that the ongoing conflict had made gas more expensive and harder to get because the supply to Europe had been cut off.
The prime minister said that during the Covid pandemic, gas prices dropped to $2 per unit, which was the lowest they had ever been. He said that the government at the time was criminally negligent for not securing the import of gas, which has caused the whole country to suffer.
He said that when Nawaz Sharif was prime minister, an agreement was made with Qatar to buy LNG for 15 years at 13.2% of the Brent price. Unfortunately, the next government turned it into a political issue.
He said that because of what was going on in the world, gas was no longer available and was being sold at a very high price on the global market. He also said that they would have to switch quickly to solar and other renewable energy sources.
The prime minister said that the previous PML-N government tried to make cheap hydroelectric power and bought land worth Rs100 billion to build the Bhasha dam, but that these were long-term plans to make power in the country more affordable.
He said that coal and gas-powered projects were finished by the PML-N government in 2015 as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to make up for 20 hours of crippling power outages in the country.
“The green lands were turned into deserts, industries ground to a halt, and the country’s exports plummeted,” the prime minister said, recalling the past. “In those trying times, former premier Nawaz Sharif stood firm and took the bull by the horns by setting up power plants. This ended load-shedding, which was a big achievement,’something like the best chapter in the history of the country, making the nation stronger.”
