Category: Recent Post

Although Portugal’s second solar energy auction is not expected to be finalized until tomorrow, financial newspaper Expresso has revealed the 700 MW procurement round secured a world record lowest bid of €0.0112/kWh ($0.0132). If confirmed, that price would be $0.0003 lower than the $0.0135/kWh bid submitted by French energy group EDF and China’s JinkoPower in a 2 GW tender held in Abu Dhabi, which was cofirmed in July. Portugal’s first solar auction, last summer, saw the Directorate General for Energy and Geology allocate 1.15 GW of solar generation capacity – less than the 1.4…

Read More

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet on Wednesday once again approved an increase in electricity rates by Rs1.09 to Rs2.89 per unit for various consumers of Karachi to bring it on a par with the rest of the country, with effect from September 1. A meeting of the ECC presided over by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, also ordered immediate disbursement of Rs4.7 billion tariff differential subsidy to K-Electric and approved an amount of up to $142 million to…

Read More

3 September 2020 (IEEFA Pakistan): Pakistan risks locking itself into building more power capacity than it needs as a result of over-optimistic energy demand growth forecasts that do not take into account the impact of COVID-19, according to a new IEEFA report. Pakistan’s state-owned National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) published its latest long-term power plan – the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP) 2047 – in April 2020. Report author Simon Nicholas, energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), says the policy document fails…

Read More

The government of Punjab has signed an agreement for the generation of the cheapest solar power in the history of Pakistan. The deal was inked on Thursday, under which private investors will set up a 100 MW solar power plant in Layyah district with a tariff of only 3.7 cents. Punjab Chief Minister, Sardar Usman Bazdar, and Federal Minister for Energy, Omar Ayub Khan, were the chief guests at the signing ceremony of the agreement between the Punjab Power Development Board, Alternative Energy Development Board, and Zhenfa Pakistan New Energy…

Read More

WASHINGTON: Under its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) policy, China is pursuing projects in Pakistan that would decrease Beijing’s reliance on strategic choke points, says a Pentagon report released on Wednesday. The 2020 Pentagon report on China’s military power also shows that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has surpassed the US military in terms of navy size, land-based missiles and advanced air defence systems. A chapter on Beijing’s economic policies notes that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects focus on pipelines and port construction that would “decrease China’s reliance on transporting energy…

Read More