Students studying in dark

Energy is one of the major components of the economic development of a country.  Growth in Industry, Agriculture, Information Technology and almost in all fields depend on the availability of sufficient energy. The scarcity of energy may bring devastating effects on all these sectors, significantly reducing their production capacity.  Pakistan being a developing country mainly depends on agriculture as the backbone of the economy but the percentage of agriculture sector‘s contribution to the GDP has reduced considerably over the years at the expense of industrial growth. However, Agriculture still holds the primary importance.

Whether we talk about Agriculture or Industry, one factor that is the key to their growth is energy. Pakistan, unfortunately, is facing a huge energy crisis, which is hampering the economy in many ways. According to the fresh data available to us, Pakistan is producing of electricity of about 16000 MW and the demand is 22000. This shows that we are facing a shortage of about 6000 MW. About 60% of the total electricity is generated from oil and gas. Oil is not the only major cause of depletion in foreign exchange reserves but is also a major source of pollution. On the other hand, gas reservoirs have also started depleting thanks to the overuse of gas in transportation and on the household level.

The use of gas in electricity generation will further speed up the already decreasing reservoirs.

First of all, the energy crisis is itself can be called as self-created because of the lack of investment we had in this sector. We never tapped renewable energy resources for electricity generation rather we focused on high-cost Independent power projects (running on oil), which destroyed our economy from within. Another thing that is worth mentioning is the untapped coal reservoirs in Thar region, which is the fifth biggest in the world. Wind and energy can also be great alternatives for the energy generation from oil because of the capacity that we have in both sectors.

We need to bring our energy generating companies under one closely-packed arrangement to improve communication between. Line losses and theft is one of the major reasons for our energy shortage. We need to focus on them in order to recover what we are investing in this sector. Lastly, the investment-friendly environment is one of the major needs to break the shackles of energy unavailability. the government is now moving in the right direction by starting energy projects of worth 34 billion dollars under the CPEC project with the help of Chinese investment and we can hope that this shortage gap will be soon filled.

The energy crisis has a drastic negative impact on the national economy, severely affecting the country in many ways. Due to the energy crisis, we have lost 5% of our Gross Domestic Product. Foreign exchange reserves have depleted due to imports of oil and other products. Industry and agriculture have suffered setbacks due to the shortage of energy. Imports have increased and exports have decreased to a very low level due to the energy crisis.

Fertilizer, which we can easily export is now a costing us a major portion of our foreign exchange reserves.  Above all, it affects general public and especially students, which causes major resentment and frustration among the nation against the government. This public unrest can prove to be fatal for our newborn democracy. It’s the responsibility of the government to focus more on the indigenous resources of energy than focusing on the oil and other expensive resources.