Master plan for power sector big but not unrealistic

THE government is apparently in a dilemma over the 82,000MW power demand forecast until 2041 as estimated in the revised Power System Master Plan as it finds it ‘unrealistic and abnormally high’. The master plan is taking stock of power demand when big shortage in local power generation is forcing the government to import electricity from India at a high cost, besides buying from local power producers at similar high cost.

On Sunday, representatives of a joint-venture between two Japanese power companies presented a summary of the revised PSMP-2016 at a seminar with Prime Minister’s Energy Adviser Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, as per reports in a national daily.

According to some experts the recent double-digit growth in power demand was a bubble; which would not sustain even for the next two years. The Rural Electrification Board is now showing 14 per cent growth in power demand through extending power connections in the country’s poverty-hit areas; which is not sustainable unless industrialisation and commercial activities are expanded to rural areas.

The revised PSMP has projected per capita power generation at 2,400 units or kilowatt-hour per annum for being a developed nation by 2041, which was 1,500 units in the previous plan. The JICA team, as can be gleaned from its report, assumed that per capita income would increase from USD 1207 in 2015 to USD 10,993 in 2041 in nominal terms while the economy would grow at an average rate of 7.4 per cent between 2016 and 2020 and 6.1 per cent between 2016 and 2041.

These assumptions are far from unrealistic. In 1970 our per capita income was USD 70 in nominal terms while it is now over USD 1700 –not including our black or hidden economy; which could potentially add 50-81 per cent to the official figures. So if we can pull off this over twenty fold increase in only 47 years why can’t we multiply it by a comparatively mere eight times between 2017 and 2041.

It is unrealistic to assume that our GDP will grow but our overall use won’t–in fact there is a very strong correlation between GDP per capita growth and energy use–if GDP per capita goes up eight times it is completely reasonable to assume that energy use will also go up by 8-10 times. If the government itself assumes that we will become a trillion dollar economy by 2025 then these assumptions are completely reasonable–in fact these data assumptions are extrapolations from the governments Five-Year Plans. The onus is now on the government to prove that it has an efficient and sustainable energy plan –or we will be back to the merry days of load shedding.