MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR SELECTION OF CLEAN COAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR POWER PLANTS IN PAKISTAN USING WORLD BANK GUIDELINES

Abstract

Over the next two decades, the world will become increasingly dependent on electricity to meet its energy needs. Electricity is expected to remain the fastest growing form of end use energy worldwide through year 2030, as it has been over the past several decades. World net electricity generation will nearly double, from 17.3 trillion kwh in 2005 to 33.3 trillion kwh in year 2030. About 1.6 billion people or 25% of the world population is lacking access to electricity. It is essential that steps are taken to increase access to affordable energy supplies, while minimizing environmental impacts. Rapidly depleting reserves of oil and gas has diverted the world attention towards the coal fired power generation. Pakistan is amongst the countries with lowest per capita energy availability and consumption. The nation is also amongst the most vulnerable economies on the energy security matrix because of high import dependence, inefficient GDP conversion and high price sensitivity. Pakistan’s per capita per year energy use is 12.7 MMBTU compared with 65 MMBTU/capita/year for the world. Pakistan’s energy mix is significantly different from that of the world comprising 48.4% gas, 30% oil mainly imported, 12.7% hydel, 7.4% coal and 1% nuclear compared with world average of 24% gas, 36% oil, 28% coal, and 6% each for hydro and nuclear. Pakistan has the 6th largest coal reserves in the world equivalent to 185.5 billion tones of reserves of coal with heating value ranging from 5219Btu/lb to 15800 Btu/lb. Despite the huge coal reserves, the share of coal in Pakistan’s power generation is only 0.1%. The Government of Pakistan asserts that exploitation of half of coal reserves in Pakistan is sufficient for generating 100,000MW electricity for 30 years. The government has focused its attention to use these reserves for power generation for which it has issued Letters of Interests (LOIs) to 3 companies for installing power plants each having 1550MW capacity. It has further planned to increase the coal based power generation capacity to 19900MW by 2030. Government of Pakistan’s approach to increase the share of coal in its primary energy supplies and use of coal as a fuel for power generation is in line with long wave penetration theory of new fuels which foresees that coal will rebound from 2015 and once again will become one of the dominant sources of energy approaching 50% by 2100. v Moreover indigenous coal can provide the second cheapest power tarrif in Pakistan after hydel, which certainly gives it an edge over the other energy sources. Although Pakistan’s environmental regulation does limit the emissions from a coal fired power plant, the concerned authorities possesses limited knowledge for achieving it. The conventional approach will a) use the available coal resources for power production at sub-optimal efficiencies and b) add considerable amounts of green house gases to the environment and cause environmental degradation. The research suggests that the use of clean coal technologies at pre-combustion, combustion and post combustion stages of power plants will not only save precious coal reserves but will also help GOP to remain within the limits prescribed by the treaties like Kyoto protocol or any other strict future legislation. The World Bank sponsored Fast Track Technology Selection Model (FTTSM) which involves the evaluation and optimization of large number of technical, environmental and economic parameters has been improved and enhanced to make a suitable framework of clean-coal technology selection for power sector of Pakistan.