Coal power generation in Pakistan

Coal as a fuel had been ranked low on the list of Pakistan’s development priorities primarily due to concerns about its quality and requirement for huge upfront capital. Apart from this, in the absence of a strong political will to promote coal based power projects, foreign investors have not been supported as much as they ought to be. Quite a few were forced to withdraw their initiatives after incurring heavy losses. As a result what we see today is that share of coal in Pakistan’s energy mix is about 5 % and in power generation even less than 1 %. Pakistan is one of the lucky countries which are blessed with vast deposits of coal. By increasing the share of coal in our energy mix we could have conserved more valuable gas, which is deplete able resource. Unfortunately, we have compromised our future by relying excessively on natural gas, and are now running the risk of energy security.
Pakistan’s major known coal reserves are located in the province of Sindh, specifically in Thar, estimated at 175.5 billion tons which account for the bulk of Pakistan’s total reserves, estimated at 185 billion tons. Other coal deposits of significance in Sind are located at Sonda (Jharruk) 5.5 billion tons and Lakhra (Dadu) 1.33 billion tons. Current estimated value of the Thar coal deposits is $ 8 trillion and if converted into energy its values comes to $ 25 trillion. It has the potential to generate 100,000 MW of electricity for 300 years. Pakistan is 6th largest coal rich country in the world and the aggregate energy potential of these resources is more than the combined energy potential of the resources that Saudi Arabia and Iran possess. Unfortunately there are factors, other than those mentioned above, that have not supported investor’s initiatives for the exploitation of Pakistan’s coal resource in the past.

Pakistan Observer