Pakistan’s First Solar Project Is One Of The World’s Largest

Last week Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurated Pakistan’s first solar power park, which will start generating 100 megawatts of energy by the end of the year and a total of 1,000 megawatts by 2016.

Solar Farm in Bahawalpur, Pakistan

The Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park project has 400,000 solar panels, with a total cost of around $131 million. When complete the plant will produce about 2.5 times the power coming from the 392 megawatt Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California’s Mojave Desert, making it one of the largest solar parks in the world.

“If you come here after one and a half years, you will see a river of solar panels, residential buildings and offices — it will be a new world,” said site engineer Muhammad Sajid, pointing towards the surrounding desert.

This is big news for a country suffering from chronic energy shortages that leave people without power for large chunks of the day on a regular basis. And then there’s the nearly half of the households that aren’t even connected to the grid,according to a World Bank study. When temperatures soar in the summer, electricity demand can fall short by around 4,000 megawatts.

At the inauguration, the prime minister said “the dearth of electricity has pushed the country backwards and its entire industry and agriculture sector have suffered immensely.”

Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the impacts of climate change due to its location, population, and environmental degradation. A recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that people are already migrating out of the Pakistan for climate-related reasons such as flooding and heat stress, which have negative effects on agriculture and can prove very costly.

“We need energy badly and we need clean energy, this is a sustainable solution for years to come,” Imran Sikandar Baluch, head of the Bahawalpur district administration in Punjab where the plant is located, told the AFP. “Pakistan is a place where you have a lot of solar potential. In Bahawalpur, with very little rain and a lot of sunshine, it makes the project feasible and more economical.”

At a meeting shortly after the inauguration, Sharif approved expanding the project from from 10,000 acres to 15,000 acres and increasing the capacity from 1,000 megawatts to 1,500 megawatts. More

 

© 2014

Rising energy prices will challenge western way of life – MoD report

A little-known Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published earlier this year warns that converging global trends will dramatically affect UK economic prosperity through to 2040.

The report says that depletion of cheap conventional "easy oil", along with shortages of food and water due to climate change and population growth, will sustain rocketing energy prices. Long-term price spikes are likely to lead to a long recession in Western economies, fuelling internal unrest and the rise of nationalist movements.

The report departs significantly from the conservative and relatively optimistic scenarios officially adopted by the British government, as exemplified in the coalition's new Energy Security Strategy published in November last year by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).

Peak "easy oil"

The report predicts that "the imminent passing of the point of peak 'easy oil' will mean that hydrocarbon-based energy prices will rise significantly out to 2040." Other factors affecting energy prices include "increasing demand for fossil fuels" due to South Asia's "industrial rise" and greater "volatility in supply" in the Middle East.

Contradicting the British government's official position on peak oil - which accepts the International Energy Agency's (IEA) latest estimate that oil prices will reach "$125/barrel in real terms (over $215/barrel in nominal terms)" - the MoD report projects an exponential escalation in prices, such that "the increasing price of oil... is likely to reach $500 a barrel by 2040" - almost double conventional projections.

This price rise will, however, "drive the development of alternative fuel sources" including tar sands, shale gas, coal, nuclear and renewables.

Rising demand for "resources and energy" from China and India will spur a "'scramble' for commodities and resources" as less developed countries' "resource requirements may go unfulfilled." There will also be a greater chance of clashes over access to "Middle East resources", the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Climate crisis

Climates change will significantly compound these challenges, including a wide range of impacts such as "rising sea levels... increased incidents of seasonal floods, heat-waves, storms, and unpredictable farm yields."

If sea levels rise quicker than anticipated, "millions of people across South Asia (principally in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives) will be displaced, with no opportunity to return to their homes."

Irregularities in the pattern of monsoon rains are likely to undermine South Asia's "agricultural and domestic water needs", while higher temperatures will "increase the range of vector-borne diseases such as malaria", such that it becomes "prevalent all-year-round."

Water stress

Water may become a "destabilising factor", with water stress and scarcity affecting some "2.5 billion people", and acting as a limiter to economic growth in some South Asian economies, including China by 2030.

Water will be a "defence and security issue" through to 2040, and increasing water demand is also likely to "heighten tensions over shared resources such as the Brahma-Putra Himalayan region and the River Indus", between China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Food shortages

The sustainability of food production in such conditions "will also be a key issue for the region, with much of the population dependent on rice crops as a staple." The report warns that a "rapid loss of some arable land is likely to promote local, then national migration", which may contribute to unrest.

As agriculture is the single largest contributor to GDP and employment in the region, the report observes that the decline in agricultural output driven by higher temperatures, erratic weather, lower yields, soil erosion and increased pests and weeds, will primarily affect nearly all those who are "close to, or below, the poverty line."

Demographic time bomb?

Although China and India will incorporate "some measures of sustainable development", those measures will be limited by the fact that "economic growth will remain the imperative throughout the period."

Despite their confidence in being able to meet these emerging climate and energy challenges, the sheer scale of the latter - "especially with regard to food and water availability and the sensitivity of the monsoon cycle, may challenge such confidence."

Under present trends, South Asia will contain "nearly 40% of the world's population" within the next 30 years. China and India will therefore face "increasing demands" from their "burgeoning populations" requiring "strong levels of sustained economic growth over the period to maintain internal stability."

Inadequate "social and educational policies" and persistent "inequality and corruption" could turn this demographic dividend into "a 'demographic time bomb.'"

In fact, the report predicts that due to "rising inequality", ethnic tensions, strict controls on freedom of speech, and increased access to global communications, "China is likely to experience increased incidents internal of unrest."

End of growth due to resource price spikes?

But the West faces other parallel challenges:

"The growth of South Asian economies will impact on most western nations, where the way of life for the majority of the populaces may be challenged by rising energy and resource prices, coupled with a relative decline in the value of their national economies...

The economic and industrial rise of China and India will increase the cost and reduce the availability of UK energy supplies. As a resource-importing nation, and with relatively modest fossil fuel reserves, the UK will be affected by increased resource and commodity costs. The UK will increasingly need to compete with China and India in order to secure enduring access to energy."

Consequently, the report argues that the "western 'way of life'" - associated with "a wide variety of consumer choice and relatively cheap energy" - will be "increasingly challenged as lifestyles follow GDP levels and 'normalise' across the globe."

Within the US and UK, the bulk of the populations will be affected by:

"... rising energy and resource prices, and the declining availability of finance to sustain discretionary spending. In such a context, this could lead to periods of sustained recession in the West, causing increasingly protectionist policies to be adopted."

"Internal unrest"

This could occur even as growth continues in South Asia, with global GDP per capita overall levelling off to "equilibrate", culminating in "the stalling and subsequent decline of many western economies." This will result in:

"long periods of recession and rising disaffection within the UK population... This could subsequently lead to increased incidents of internal unrest, a rise of nationalistic groups and a demand for protectionist economic and defence policies."

Corporate stakeholders

This could occur even as growth continues in South Asia, with global GDP per capita overall levelling off to "equilibrate", culminating in "the stalling and subsequent decline of many western economies." This will result in:

"long periods of recession and rising disaffection within the UK population... This could subsequently lead to increased incidents of internal unrest, a rise of nationalistic groups and a demand for protectionist economic and defence policies."

The report, titled Regional Survey: South Asia out to 2040, was published by the MoD's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) as part of its Strategic Trends Programme in January. The DCDC is an MoD think tank within the Defence Academy site at Shrivenham.

The report utilised the input of a range of government agencies and departments, including the MoD's Strategy Unit, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Cabinet Office, and the Foreign Office - as well as two private institutions, Standard Chartered Bank and Now & Next. Decc is notably missing from the list of contributors.

Standard Chartered has a chequered history replete with scandals and "ethical lapses". Two years ago, an Ecologist investigation alleged that a coal power plant project in India financed by Standard Chartered among others, had "displaced poor communities and will lead to the destruction of forests."

The project was slated to receive carbon credits under the UN's controversial Clean Development Mechanism. Standard Chartered is now heavily invested in South Asia.

Now and Next is the website of a future trend analysis publication, What's Next, which includes among its clients General Electric, KPMG, McDonalds, and Shell.

Privatisation of power

Although the document sets out reasons to believe the UK is well-positioned to "adapt" to these converging trends, and perhaps even benefit from them, the overall vision heralds the recognition that of a rapidly shifting global landscape.

The report concedes that the "'relative' decline of the West is likely to lead to a new power framework where alliances are constantly reassessed and negotiated." This will also see "the declining influence of existing international institutions such as NATO and the UN Security Council."

In this context, the report predicts an accelerating coalescence between nation states and global capital, noting that:

"The line between government, and private industry protection of intellectual property of key technologies for security and wealth creation, may become increasingly blurred... [as] blueprints, patents and formulas will be increasingly seen as the foundations of wealth generation." More

MOD Report

 

Are sanctions against Iran legal? Or are they collective punishment?

Iran, Pakistan Begin Border Gas Pipe Amid Sanctions Threat

The presidents of Pakistan and Iran inaugurated work on the cross-border leg of a gas pipeline that the U.S. has warned may breach a sanctions regime aimed at curbing the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear program.

Pakistan’s benchmark KSE 100 share index plunged 2.5 percent in Karachi, the biggest drop in almost two months, as the news sparked concerns the U.S. would impose penalties.

Asif Ali Zardari, on his second trip to Iran within a month, joined Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the country’s Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi in the southern port city of Chabahar for the ground-breaking ceremony, Pakistan state television showed. The leaders offered a prayer for the project’s success and uncovered a plaque at the construction site.

Once completed, the 1,931-kilometer (1,200-mile) natural gas pipeline would help alleviate the energy crisis in Pakistan, where 18-hour blackouts last summer forced factories to close and triggered street protests. Iran is under U.S. and European Union restrictions over its atomic activities, measures that have curbed oil exports and complicated the repatriation of cash from crude sales.

Pakistan’s decision to proceed with the $1.3 billion energy link comes amid a bid to repair relations with the U.S., the South Asian nation’s biggest aid donor, after damaging setbacks including the killing of Osama bin Laden by American commandos in Pakistan in 2011 and a cross-border U.S. airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The U.S. needs Islamabad’s support as it withdraws combat forces from Afghanistan.

Oil Refinery

Ahmadinejad attacked opponents of the pipeline in a speech at the ceremony, drawing parallels between Iran and Pakistan.

“Foreigners are seeking to create divisions between nations in the region in order to control them and rob them of their wealth,” he said. “The only way for regional nations to safeguard their independence, identity, culture and wealth is through cooperation and unity.”

Iran has completed 900 kilometers of the pipeline on its side of the border, according to the website of Pakistan’s Interstate Gas Systems Pvt. Ltd., which will oversee construction in Pakistan. Under an accord signed in June 2010, Iran will provide about 21.5 million cubic meters of gas a day to Pakistan for 25 years. The deal can be extended by five years and volumes may rise to 30 million cubic meters a day.

The two countries are also expected to sign an agreement today to build a $4 billion oil refinery in Pakistan’s Gwadar, the state-run Press TV news channel reported.

‘Serious Concerns’

Work on extending the pipeline into Pakistan has been delayed by difficulties in arranging funding. The ground- breaking ceremony comes just days before Pakistan’s government, headed by Zardari’s party, is to hand over power to a caretaker administration ahead of parliamentary elections in May. The president’s term expires in September.

The U.S., which has offered to help Pakistan secure gas via an alternate route from Central Asia, has recently reiterated its concerns over the pipeline.

“If this deal is finalized for a proposed Iran-Pakistan pipeline, it would raise serious concerns under our Iran Sanctions Act,” Victoria Nuland, U.S. State Department spokeswoman, told a weekly briefing in Washington March 7. The U.S. hopes Pakistani won’t “go in a direction that would cause sanctions to kick in,” Nuland said, according to a transcript posted on the State Department website.

While Pakistan is aware of concerns in Washington, “all our friends including the U.S.” should show greater understanding of the country’s energy needs, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan told reporters March 7. More

Fourth Geneva Convention, Part 111, Article 32- 33

Art. 32. The High Contracting Parties specifically agree that each of them is prohibited from taking any measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person, but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.

Art. 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/380

 

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime. By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and World War II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, the Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that occured in them. Additional concern also addressed the United States' atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the war's end, which, in turn, caused death and disease to hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.[3] The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."

It could therefore be argued that sanctions are a type of economic warfare, in which case the Geneva Conventions should apply. Therefore, the Fourth Geneva Convention, Part 111, Article 33 would apply, prohibiting any measure to cause physical suffering to Protected Persons. Editor

 

The Deepening Iran-Pakistan Petro-Relationship

The Iran-Pakistan branch of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (IPI) seems to be coming online. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has announced he will visit Iran for the groundbreaking of the Pakistan branch of a new gas pipeline on March 11. It will be his second visit to Iran in less than a month, part of a deepening petro-relationship that is worrying the United States.

The pipeline is controversial, to say the least, in the US. The State Department has threatened Pakistan with sanctions for dealing with the regime in Iran, offering a electrification projects to replace any sort of benefit Pakistan would get from the petro-deal.

The challenge facing Islamabad is that it is next door to Iran, while the U.S. is not. In the long-run, it is not in their interest to remain at loggerheads with Tehran even if the U.S. wants them to be. In his press statements, foreign ministry spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan has been open about this. “Yes, we know about their concerns but hope our friends, including the US, will understand our economic compulsions,” said Khan.

Iran has already proposed building a new oil refinery near the Pakistani port of Gwadar.

The Pakistan-Iran pipeline is separate from a larger regional project to link India with the natural gas fields of Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan (the so-called TAPI pipeline, or Trans-Afghanistan pipeline) . It is a goal that has been lurking in the back rooms of the energy industry since the 1990s: how can one efficiently extract and export the vast energy wealth of the Caspian region without going through Russia or China?

Two decades ago Argentina-based Bridas and Texas-based Unocal were in bitter competition for who would get the Taliban’s permission to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bridas came close to signing a deal, but pulled out a year later. Unocal actually brought a Taliban delegation to visit the Texas homes of its executives. Unocal eventually pulled out when the Taliban made unreasonable demands.998, Unocal also pulled out when crashed oil prices combined with international opprobrium over the Taliban’s human rights record and terrorism made the deal too difficult to finalize.

The Asia Development Bank has been pushing TAPI for years, though the insecurity in Afghanistan remains a constant barrier to anything concrete coming to pass.

While TAPI languishes in development hell, Pakistan and Iran have pushed forward with their own pipeline.From Iran’s perspective, anything that gives them an economic connection with the region and is outside the regulatory reach of the U.S. government is a boon. From Pakistan’s perspective, too, the prospect of getting income and energy without U.S. strings attached is deeply attractive. More

 

The Race To Harness Himalayan Hydropower

Spend a day in Kathmandu, Nepal's sprawling capital of 4-million people, and you'll quickly notice what has long been a fact of life in this landlocked Himalayan country, and many other South Asian nations - no reliable electricity supply exists.

Up to eight times a day, neighborhoods throughout the city suffer rolling power cuts due to load shedding, causing residents and businesses alike to either carry on in the darkness, or rely on expensive, diesel-consuming generators to keep the lights on. Although the country's civil war ended in 2006, carrying the promise of restored domestic stability and accelerated economic development, Nepal's economy has remained hamstrung by an inconsistent energy supply, with only 40 percent of the population having access to electricity. This situation persists despite the fact that the country sits on top of a virtual goldmine - an estimated 80,000 megawatts (MW) of untapped hydroelectricity, of which it has harnessed a scant 700 MW.

Nepal's great untapped hydropower potential has not gone unnoticed. Neighbors India and China actively have courted the country for years, seeking dam construction contracts and energy export deals to help meet their own soaring domestic energy needs. But while some Nepalese hydroelectric projects have moved forward, some of the country's more ambitious hydroelectric development plans have been delayed or scrapped altogether since 2006, owing to Nepal's notoriously fractious internal politics, and persistent social unrest near proposed dam-construction sites in rural areas formerly sympathetic to the Maoist insurgency. One reason for the impasse surrounding many major hydroelectric projects is that Nepal has long been wary of foreign meddling in its internal affairs, which has meant that Indian and Chinese efforts to bankroll major infrastructure projects are automatically viewed with suspicion.

India and China have become locked in competition to ink construction contracts in Bhutan and Burma as well, two countries similarly spanned by the Himalaya that possess substantial undeveloped hydroelectric resources. Bhutan and Burma have both embraced the idea of heightened hydroelectric development, reflecting a different attitude than Nepal's regarding both energy infrastructure and foreign contractors. Bhutan would benefit greatly from increased domestic power production, given that it now uses only 390 MW of its 30,000 MW hydropower potential (or 1.3 percent). Even at that modest level of development, hydropower has already emerged as one of the mainstays of the Bhutanese economy, alongside tourism. However, the country currently lacks the technical resources to further bolster its hydroelectric capacity, a vacuum that state-owned Indian energy firms have rushed to fill. Indian firms have competitive advantage over in China in this regard, as Chinese-Bhutanese relations have remained tense over the years due to persistent quarreling over contested border areas. As a result, many of the country's high-profile hydroelectric projects - such as the 2,500 MW Sankosh River Hydropower project, slated to become the world's fifth tallest dam upon completion in 2016 - are contracted to Indian companies.

Burma, meanwhile, represents one of the last major untapped sources of hydroelectricity in South Asia. From Burma's point of view, developing energy resources in the country's mountainous north - where many proposed hydroelectric sites lie - is strategically important for two reasons. Firstly, developing some of the country's estimated 40,000 MW of hydroelectric potential would help shore up domestic energy supply in this country of 54 million, which is slated to grow to 61 million by 2025, and nearly 71 million by 2050. Currently, Burma has harnessed only 2,440 MW, or six percent of this potential. Secondly, excess hydroelectricity produced in this region could be sold to consumers in adjacent Yunnan province (China) and Assam state (India), two economically underdeveloped regions bordering Burma that would benefit greatly from a more reliable energy supply. More

 

Pre-feasibility report: Islamabad asks WB to weigh up power import from India

ISLAMABAD: The World Bank has begun preparing a pre-feasibility report to assess the viability of Pakistan importing power from India under the Pakistan Regional Trade Programme, a senior water ministry official told The Express Tribune.

The World Bank’s initiative comes in light of the request made by Pakistan to provide technical assistance to conduct a pre-feasibility study regarding the import of power and exploring interconnection options between the power systems of both nations.

The study will help Pakistan in identifying issues and important risks of the proposed interconnection and electricity trade. It will be evaluated by a committee of experts from the National Transmission Dispatch Company and the Ministry of Water and Power. The official said negotiations among various stakeholders regarding the possibility of interconnecting power grids are ongoing.

Pakistan had decided in April that it would import up to 500 megawatts of electricity from India with the World Bank agreeing to fund construction of the required infrastructure. “We will import 500MW from India initially. Import can be increased up to 5,000MW if our need so demands,” said the ministry official.

No transmission link currently exists between India and Pakistan. It was decided earlier that the countries will build a 45-kilometre, 220 kilovolt transmission line within six months of signing a formal agreement. The agreement will be valid for five years, after which it can be extended for another five years. More