WWEA warns against Introduction of Auctions in Pakistan

End of December, the World Wind Energy Association, in partnership with Heinrich Böll Stiftung Pakistan, launched the policy paper “Accelerating Wind Power Deployment in Pakistan: Capacity Building and Policy Options” on the occasion of a wind energy seminar held in Islamabad.

Third in a series, the policy paper not only discusses barriers to wind market growth but provides also various policy and capacity building tools to overcome issues, in particular

• effective management of high level of renewable energy integration;
• better understanding for wind energy costs and tariff determination mechanism;
• and financial modeling techniques for better financial close.

The event in Islamabad was attended by around 100 participants including public officials, private sector developers, power utilities, international development partners, academia and civil society. The policy paper launch was followed by an advisory workshop where sector experts advised public and private decision makers. The workshop served the purpose of enhancing professional capacities of public officials by making them familiar with the policy options to overcome challenges faced by the wind power market in the country.

One of the major points of discussion was how to identify the appropriate tariff setting mechanism. Government was advised to continue with the feed-in-tariff for wind energy projects instead of moving towards auctions system which could be detrimental to the market which took over a decade to gain momentum. Already in summer 2016, WWEA had submitted a position paper (as attached) to the government of Pakistan.

Stefan Gsänger, WWEA Secretary General: "We strongly recommend the Government of Pakistan to provide regulatory stability and predictability and not to change the current feed-in tariff scheme fundamentally. After several years, the Pakistani wind market is finally developing well and shows substantial growth. With an abrupt change in the support scheme, the country would put on risk its domestic wind sector, including the establishment of a domestic supply chain.“ 

Wind energy cost competitiveness was the other important area of discussion. It was highlighted that wind energy has become cost competitive to traditional sources of energy in meeting the growing energy demands of Pakistan.

As the country has become a sizable wind market with 590 MW of installed capacity, the grid operator was suggested to start comprehensive planning to ensure variable renewable energy integration onto existing grid systems, like it has been achieved in many other countries with much higher wind power shares of 20 % and more.

• Details about the wind market in Pakistan and capacity building areas are in the policy paper which has been attached respectively can be downloaded here: http://www.wwindea.org/wwea-fostering-wind-power-deployment-in-pakistan-through-capacity-building-wwea-warns-against-introduction-of-auctions/