Greening of Pakistan's power grid.

Byline: DR. SHAHID RAHIM

Power generation from renewable sources such as solar and wind offers numerous benefits to society but poses multiple challenges also. In line with the global trend, our government also has set ambitious targets of 20 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030 for their deployment in the country's power grid. This is arguably a good first step as renewables can power our dreams of economic development in a secure, affordable, and sustainable manner. Turning dreams into reality, however, requires that supportive policy and regulatory frameworks be placed on the ground for embracing renewables. Below we identify some major challenges the country will face in upscaling power generation from renewables and also discuss the policy and regulatory imperatives to confront these challenges.

Renewable power generation technologies, especially those based on solar and wind, are making rapid inroads into the power grids around the world. According to REN21's just released Renewables 2022 Global Status Report (REN21 GSR 2022), 175 GW of solar photovoltaic (PV) and 102 GW of wind capacities were added in the global power grids during 2021 leading to a total PV capacity of 942 GW and wind capacity of 845 GW in the world. This amounted to roughly 84 percent of the total new generating capacity. Total investment during last year on renewables exceeded USD 366 billion in which 56 percent went to solar PV and 40 percent to wind projects. For the first time ever, solar and wind plants jointly were able to contribute over 10 percent of the electricity generation of the world in 2021.

The Renewable 2021: Analysis and Forecasts 2026 report, released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in December 2021, emphasizes that the present thrust of power generation from renewables must be maintained, and in fact upscaled as much as three times, in the future to realize the society's "Net Zero by 2050" goals. BloombergNEF, another global heavyweight in tracking investment trends in the world, also concurs with the IEA's above assertion in its Energy Transition Investment Trends 2022.

Multiple developments have made renewable generation options top contenders for serving the future electricity demands of the world despite that fossil fuel-based power technologies' receiving hefty subsidies (estimated to be over USD 5.9 trillion in 2020). The cost of electricity for solar PV has come down by 89 percent since 2010, 67 percent for concentrated solar power (CSP), 64...