Sindh Energy Minister Imtiaz Sheikh writes protest letter to the Fed Energy Minister
Karachi
The Federal government’s Alternative Renewable Energy Board selects only one out of 25 Solar Power Projects of Sindh for competitive bidding.
Expressing his utter surprise on neglecting Sindh, Provincial Energy Minister Imtiaz Ahmad Sheikh has demanded that all solar and wind power generation projects of Sindh should be included in competitive bidding so that cheap, transparent and environment-friendly energy projects can be encouraged.
In a letter to the Federal Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir, Sindh Minister said that as the country cannot afford expensive electricity, and particularly in view of environmental changes and harmful electricity projects, Sindh has prepared several plans for producing cheap and environment-friendly energy from sunlight.
Imtiaz Sheikh added that as per the Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCoE) and the Integrated Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP), plans to generate up to 1000 MW each from wind and solar have been drawn up. “But surprisingly, the Alternative Renewable Energy Board (AEDB) has selected only one solar power project out of 25 in Sindh for competitive bidding while the country and the people are in dire straits,” he said and added that inflation has gripped the people who need cheap electricity and the solution is with Sindh, but Sindh’s solar and wind energy projects have been neglected for a long time.
He said that it is unfair that projects of only limited capacity to get transparent and cheap energy were selected for competitive bidding.
According to the Alternative Renewable Energy Policy 2019, as many as 31 projects of 2139 MW of wind power and 69 projects of 4193 MW of solar power should have been taken up in competitive bidding. But the Alternative Renewable Energy Board (AEDB) selected only 22 wind and 27 solar energy projects without any clear criteria.
“Everyone knows that Sindh is a province rich in renewable and alternative energy resources, and at the request of the Federal Ministry of Energy, the study of renewable energy by the World Bank was carried out for laying transmission lines. A slight uptick in the network after deification, 6765 MW of solar and wind energy can be delivered by 2025 and 10035 MW by 2030, but despite Sindh’s natural resources for generating environment-friendly electricity, Sindh’s projects are not selected for competitive bidding, Imtiaz Sheikh lamented. (PR)
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