Engineering Post Report
The federal government has taken a very appreciable policy of not to have coal-based power plants, local or imported, any more as the country’s positive step towards elimination of air pollution and climate change.
Accordingly, all coal based power based plants will be transformed into hydropower plants. Two coal-based power plants with production capacity of 2600 MW have already been scrapped and these were also going to be transformed into hydro-power plants.
Pakistan has currently 104 all sources power plants including hydro, begasse, nuclear. solar, wind, RLNG, gas, furnace oil ,local and imported coal with installed power generation capacity of 35961 MW.
Six power plants based solar, Imported LNG and hydro sources with total installed capacity of 1441 MW were added during financial year 2019-20 raising country’s total production to 37402 MW.
In pursuance of the policy decision, two local coal based plants, Lakhra and Engro Thar Coal with production capacity of 810 MW and the imported coal based plants, Port Qasim Coal, Sahiwal Coal and China Hubco, with total power generation capacity of 3960 MW, are going to be transformed into hydro power plants apparently in a phased manner ensuring no immediate reduction in country’s power generation occurs.
Another 18 all sources power generation plants are planned to be added with installed capacity of 3933 MW during current financial year 2020-21. These include five local coal based power plants, Lucky,Thal Nova, Thar TEL ,Thar-1 (Shanghai Electric ) Unit 1 and Sadiqsons which are also going to be transformed to hydropower plants.
