A meeting of the Sindh cabinet scheduled for today (Thursday) is going to consider the first-ever policy of the province to utilise municipal waste of Karachi for power generation.
This was stated by Sindh Energy Minister Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh as he chaired a meeting to finalise the draft of the Sindh Waste-to-Energy Policy 2021. The meeting was attended by Sindh Local Government Secretary Syed Najam Ahmed Shah, Energy Secretary Abu Bakar Ahmed, Sindh Solid Waste Management Board Managing Director Zubair Channa and other officials.
The participants of the meeting were informed that over 10,000 tonnes of municipal waste being generated in Karachi alone was capable of producing over 200 megawatts of renewable electricity.
The waste-to-energy plant could be installed at the Jam Chakro landfill site of the city as renewable electricity to be generated by the unit could easily be supplied to the K-Electric whose grid station is nearby. The meeting was informed that certain credible energy sector companies had contacted the government to install a waste-to-energy plant at the Jam Chakro landfill site, which would be capable of producing up to 150 MWs of renewable energy.
The Sindh energy minister said the waste-to-energy project was being installed with the vision to use the most effective and safest way to get rid of the issue of municipal waste of Karachi. He added that the project was aimed at the disposal and consumption of trash in the most environment-friendly manner.
Gas crisis
Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, the energy minister said the crisis of natural gas had been worsening in the country. He said that Sindh accounted for up to 65 per cent of the natural gas being produced in the country but despite that, the provincial consumers were being denied gas.
Shaikh lamented that the compressed natural gas supply stations in the province had been shut down due to curtailment of gas supply. Export-oriented industries were also being shut down as the federal government did not have the ability to import RLNG for overcoming the persisting energy shortfall in the country, he said. He asked the federal government not to further increase the electricity tariff.
