Worldwide the energy scene is bad; there are both supply and high price issues.
Poor countries’ hardship is obviously more. Governments do not have foreign exchange and money to subsidise while people cannot pay the high prices.
Many people in Pakistan are wondering as to what is the situation in the region in terms of energy supplies and prices. We will try to provide a rough comparative sketch of the energy scene in South Asia involving Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. India is comparatively rich in terms of energy resources – coal, hydro and solar. These three resources based electricity is the cheapest in India where coal produces 204,080 megawatts, hydro 46,850MW and renewables 11,065MW, totalling 399,496MW.
It has been mostly self-sufficient in these resources. However, lately there are local coal supply issues as compared to demand and it has to import coal from abroad. Imported coal is being mixed with local coal with a cost penalty of 30% in the cost of generation.
India imports gas in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is expensive these days, however, there is hardly any electricity generation based on gas.
Inefficiency and transmission and distribution (T&D) losses in India are comparable with Pakistan or even more, which affects cost of supplies. There are huge DISCOM losses, which have accumulated almost comparable with Pakistan. In Pakistan, these losses show up in the form of a unique term called circular debt.
By 2014, in Indian rural areas, load-shedding used to be of 10-12 hours. Average power shortage was 17-20%.These days there is power surplus with an installed capacity of 400 gigawatts (with a renewable share of 158GW) against demand for 210 GW.
There shouldn’t be any load-shedding in India due to both enough supply and having local fuel. However, in April, peak demand in India was 207.1GW and the supply was short by 10GW, which means about 5% load-shedding or 1.25 hours of average load-shedding per day.
Average AT&C losses in India are 22%. There is a large variation in this among states – least loss states are Delhi, Kerala and Punjab, where losses are around 10%. Bihar has 30% losses, UP 33% and occupied Kashmir 50%.
Bangladesh and Pakistan seem to have an identical syndrome – high installed capacity and low fuel availability due to higher prices. It had to approach the IMF as well due to the current account deficit created by heavy and expensive energy imports.
Installed electricity capacity in Bangladesh is 25,566MW against peak demand for 14,782MW. Some 7.89% of electricity is generated from coal, 50.84% from gas including LNG, 28% from furnace oil and 6% from diesel.
T&D losses in Bangladesh DISCOs have been reduced to 10-12% (from 36.19% in 1988 and 15.42% in 1998), as opposed to 17% in Pakistan. Perhaps, poverty reduction accompanied by the highest per capita income and growth in the region has played a role in the T&D loss reduction. In Bangladesh, load-shedding is much lesser than in Pakistan. Dhaka Electricity Board has announced load-shedding twice a day for two hours each.
Various electricity conservation measures have been enforced. It has almost the same problems as in Pakistan. Excess capacity and high capacity charges, dependence on expensive imported gas and furnace oil.
