Why energy insecurity?
Politicians have too limited an attention-span
ON May 14 last year, I shared a picture of two former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif signing the historic Charter of Democracy in London in a Whatsapp group that primarily dealt with issues related to Electricity Markets. The admin of the group who happened to be a covert PTI zealot got instantly infuriated and snubbed me by reiterating group policy which was supposedly not to share any political post and abide by the group rules. Finding myself in an awkward position, the only way left was to effectively dissociate from the group activities. And to this day, the moratorium continues.
But the question still remains. Was I wrong in referring to the historic Charter of Democracy signed by the then most popular political leadership in a forum that was primarily created to discuss issues of energy?
In my humble opinion, there is an inherent and inseparable correlation between a country’s stable political system and the health of its energy security apparatus. Political instability for an extended period of time leads to serious gaps in the conception, planning, recalibration, financial management, time and cost estimates, execution, control and monitoring of key energy projects.
Repeated bouts of political engineering drastically shrink space for real energy planners to undertake their primary task. Can long term energy security plans be devised in a vacuum? Political governments are always constrained by immense pressures of time and budget. In the absence of broader political consensus on economic issues and energy policy and when no government is sure of its existence beyond a few months or at best a very few years, it is asking for the moon to expect political governments to do marvels 6n energy security.
Extreme pressures of showing results within a few months or a couple of years or so and then going into the elections, is indeed an aberration. Invisible forces enjoying real power cause frequent changes in the statecraft and in turn render energy security planning at the whims of ever-changing rulers who always feel themselves at the pleasure of the establishment.
There is always an established and well settled dictum that those individuals or institutions who wield real power must be held responsible and accountable for the ills of the country. So is the case for energy security as well. The professionals having capacity to plan have no power of decision making and those having power of decision making have no capacity to plan.
Planning for energy security is a very serious business and cannot be held hostage to pressures of time. One has to make allowance for politicians to be not immune from worldly and mundane expectations of retaining political power by venturing into undertaking such projects that, in the long run, fall in the category of white elephants but, in the shorter term, reap political benefits by fetching a higher number of votes. That indeed is a bad proposition but, sadly, it has happened in the post-2008 era when we saw no real and substantive efforts with regard to construction of long-term hydel power stations, thermal power plants based on indigenous fuels or plants based on renewable energy, and instead no stone was left unturned to harness projects having minimum construction period with no regard to the kind of fuel, imported or indigenous, its adverse linkages with foreign exchange and expected exorbitant capacity payments. The politicians under extreme pressures of time simply gave in, showing no maturity and character by exploiting “twenty hours of loadshedding and imminent economic disaster” and undertook rental power plants and thermal power plants based on imported LNG and coal.
The present precarious economic condition has an unintended silver lining for Pakistan’s ailing energy sector. Now the power planners enjoy no more a carte blanche and their decisions are subject to strict scrutiny by all and sundry. NEPRA has approved an Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP) based on the least-cost principle. Projects based on renewable energy have started getting due importance. Of late, social media and Thinktanks like PIDE have started debating and confronting decisions regarding energy issues.
After having got astray for decades, the dust has started settling down.
Political instability has taken a very heavy toll on our polity. The power sector is no exception. Outright usurpation of decision making from true professionals in energy policy and subjecting it to the whims of part-timer technocrats-cum-politicians having glaring conflict of interests have changed the complexion of our energy sector. The only silver lining is that things are now no more the same.
Much water has flown under the bridge. It is now time for a switchover. A political consensus will have to be evolved for a sustainable power sector. The game of musical chairs must end now. Frequent changes of guard cannot ensure a sustainable energy sector. The sooner it is materialized, the better it will be for the state and the people of Pakistan.
Political instability has taken a very heavy toll on our polity. The power sector is no exception. Outright usurpation of decision making from true professionals in energy policy and subjecting it to the whims of part-timer technocratscum-politicians having glaring conflict of interests have changed the complexion of our energy sector.