Pakistan looks to solar to replace abandoned 300MW coal project

The Pakistan Ministry of Energy has reportedly decided to abandon a 300MW imported coal-fired power plant and is hoping to instead build a solar power plant of the same capacity.

According to Pakistani officials speaking to The News International, one of the largest English language newspapers in Pakistan, the power division of Pakistan’s Ministry of Energy has decided to abandon a 300MW imported coal-based power plant which was to be built in the port city of Gwadar.

Conceived under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) arrangement and originally approved back in 2016, construction of the 300MW facility was never begun, and now the Pakistani government wants China to instead install a 300MW solar power plant.

The decision follows the government’s decision to halt the development of any new power plants based on imported fuel.

“We have decided to abandon the project, but we will have to take up the issue at various CPEC forums with our Chinese counterparts,” an unnamed official told The News.

“CPEC projects have sensitivity and importance which is why the Power Division’s decision to replace the imported coal-based project at Gwadar with a solar plant is being kept at a low profile.”

According to Pakistan’s National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA), at the end of 2020 only 4% of the country’s power generation capacity came from renewable energy sources – though this excludes another 31% capacity which comes from hydroelectric.

While the country’s NEPRA separates renewables and hydro in its reporting, the two are combined under Pakistan’s renewable energy target.

In 2020, Pakistan was targeting 30% renewable capacity by 2030, but the country’s revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) submitted to the UN earlier this year describes a target of 60% renewable capacity by 2030.

Despite seemingly ambitious targets for future renewable energy development, Pakistan’s current plans surrounding its fossil fuel generation capacity do not bode well.

Even though the country has moved to halt imported fuel stocks and has asked China to replace the proposed 300MW imported coal facility in Gwadar with a solar power plant, Pakistan’s minister for power division, Khurram Dastgir Khan, told The News that the country was planning to convert its existing imported coal-based power plants, worth a total of 3,960MW, to run on local coal.

Converting these projects from imported to local coal will take time and investment, according to Khan, which seems to run somewhat contrary to any renewable energy targets the country has espoused.

Similarly, Khan also told The News that the Pakistani government “will continue the policy to install more nuclear power plants.”