60% of Pakistan’s Energy Will Be ‘Clean’ By 2030: Imran Khan

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan released a statement claiming for 60% of Pakistan’s energy to come from cleaner, renewable sources by 2030. 

The statement was made while engaging at the Climate Ambition Summit, 2020. The Prime Minister’s office says the summit was a high-level virtual event which was organized to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

The address began by bringing to the limelight how Pakistan contributes less than one percent to the cumulative global emissions. The increased number of national parks and protected areas (from 30-45) was also mentioned.

“Sadly, we are the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change. We have decided, firstly, that we will have nature-based solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change”, he said. Furthermore he added that the mitigation strategies include notable afforestation, (planting ten billion trees in the next three years).

“At the same time we have decided we will not have power based on coal. We have already scrapped two coal power projects that were supposed to produce 2,600MW of energy, and replaced [them] with hydro-electricity”, he claimed.

Speaking additionally on indigenous coal, the PM addressed that the government deliberates to facilitate energy production either by ‘coal to liquid’ or by ‘coal to gas’ in order to avoid the indiscriminate burning of coal.