Current & Future Consumption of Energy in Pakistan

In an article printed in the Business Recorder on March 26th 2009, the Asian Development Bank estimated that Pakistan was not developing into a prime producer of green house gas emissions like most other developing countries. In a study conducted by the ADB, it was calculated that on a per capita basis, Pakistan produced 0.7 tons of GHG emissions compared to 25 tons being produced on average by people living in the US & Canada. Even in comparison with other developing, the percentage of GHG emitted was a lot less with the average emissions per capita for developing countries being at 2.1 tons.

The primary reason for such low levels of emissions has been due the large scale fuel switching in industries which saw them change their primary source of energy from natural gas and coal to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). However, the study also found that the present amount of energy being consumed by the country is not efficiently generated nor properly distributed. The study highlighted the fact that Pakistan consumed 5.0 times as much primary energy to produce a unit of GDP as compared to Bangladesh, 3.4 times as much as Sri Lanka or 2.3 times as much as Nepal.

With the countries current demand for energy resources rising rapidly, especially in the case of electricity, where ADB estimated that it is growing at 12 percent per annum. Pakistan needs to focus more on energy conservation and alternative sources of energy in order to become more productive and increase its economic growth.