Publications

The conventional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles form the backbone of the transport sector and contributes to 23% of global CO2 emissions. These vehicles are also responsible for high levels of air pollution in large cities, leading to major health concerns. As a result, policy makers and concerned authorities are looking towards electric vehicles (EVs) to help tackle air pollution problems and the climate change issues. However, one of the major drivers for growth in the number of EVs is the easy access to charging infrastructure as well as the enabling environment for the consumers in order to purchase them. In this regard, the electric utility and supply companies have to play a major role in planning and in providing EV charging infrastructure, as they are the enablers of this infrastructure. Electric utilities can start leveraging the existing infrastructure to find additional sources of revenues or improve the way they manage their energy grids. It is important that electric utilities act fast and tap into innovative business models to make use of this opportunity, as the existing relationship with grid customers puts electric utilities in an advantageous position.

The SAARC Energy Centre, recognising this challenge, has decided to chart a course towards a sustainable, secure and prosperous future based more heavily on transport sector electrification. Accordingly, two studies related to the introduction of EVs within the SAARC region were carried out in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, SAARC Energy Centre decided to streamline its efforts to produce substantive results for the SAARC region, and decided to coordinate with selected electric utilities of the SAARC member states and facilitate them in formulating action plans for introducing EV charging infrastructure. The objective was to develop medium to long term action plans and to create awareness among the stakeholders including decision makers, regulators, project developers, utility companies etc. on the importance of EV charging infrastructure. The current study report presents the Centre’s efforts in that direction, with an ambition to embed the issue of EV charging infrastructure high on the agenda of the member states, and to become a driver for a positive change in SAARC.

The eight-nation SAARC region is on a growth trajectory. Labelled as some of the fastest growing economies in the world, the Member States gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates range from 5% to 8%. Significant momentum in the economies has led to strong demand for Crude Oil and derivative POL (Petroleum, Oil and Lubricants) products, primarily from the transportation and power sectors. However, lack of adequate crude oil reserves has made the region import-dependent. All Member States, except India, depend on imports to meet their demand for POL products.

The rapid economic growth in the region, led by rise in investments, is expected to improve the demand for petroleum products, boosting intra-regional and inter-regional trade. At present, intra-regional trade of crude oil and petroleum products is limited to export of POL products from India to Bhutan, Nepal and to some extent to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Electric vehicles are gaining popularity the world over. They are becoming the preferred vehicle type by both consumers as well as governments, which has pushed the automotive manufacturers into EV development and technology innovation. Mass adoption of BEVs have been hailed as a significant driver bringing reductions in two of the most threatening issues facing developing countries: pollution levels and oil import bills. The economic potential of EVs is tremendous: holding other factors constant, a 1000 cc fuel (operating on petrol) car has an expense (fuel cost) of PKR 284,760 per annum, whereas a comparable EV has an associated charge cost of only PKR 30,240 per annum. However, electric vehicles in developing countries like Pakistan and India remain a niche offering. This study is a step towards exploring the BEV manufacturing potential in Pakistan and India. Contrary to popular belief, despite energy shortages, BEVs have the potential of gaining widespread adoption in Pakistan and India if adapted to the local context supported with right set of regulatory policies.

Power generation from coal needs in depth evaluation not only because it is the largest contributor in energy sector globally but also because of the potential threat to the environment caused by the impurities inherited with coal. Low cost of power generation from coal along with huge reserves of coal in SAARC region makes coal-based power plants attractive in this part of the world. Moreover, since major chunk of these reserves has low calorific value, it is important to find economical and sustainable solution for its effective use in power plants.

Environmental concerns of the world are valid and it is important to thoroughly assess ways and means to address the associated issues. Therefore, considering availability and potential, SEC have carried out this study on “Assessment of Clean Power Generation Technologies Using Low Calorific Value Coal in SAARC Region” which will help to access the situation in SAARC countries and offers practical solutions/ recommendations to the public and private sectors of the Member States

Each year, air pollution from crop residue burning in parts of India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh poses a recurring and growing threat, leading to massive winter pollution, and health and safety hazards in the South Asian region. The rising problems associated with pollution from the crop residue burning have initiated exploration of alternative uses of this residue. Traditionally, this residue is being used as cattle fodder, cooking fuel, animal bedding and paper production, however, around 75-80% of the quantity continues to be burnt in-situ. Energy generation using crop residue can be a sustainable option for effective residue utilization in the SAARC Member States. Different means and methods of utilizing crop residue for energy generation purposes have been explored in this study, to curb the hazards of burning such crop residue.

The SMSs are among the fastest-growing developing nations in the World. They are home to a growing middle class population, which, with improving economic conditions and increase in per capita income, has witnessed higher growth in primary energy consumption

The objective of this report is to assess nation-wise energy outlook till 2030, which shall facilitate policy/ decisionmakers, planners and other stakeholders of the energy sector to interpret investment requirements for meeting the demand of the rising population

“Smart grid is an electricity grid with communication, automation and IT systems that enable real time monitoring and control of bi-directional power flows and information flows from points of generation to points of consumption at the appliances level3.” Smart grid technologies provide for an interactive grid which facilitates consumers with the option of being prosumer and provides them the opportunity to both consume and sell electricity from and to the grid based on the requirement and price of the available electricity.

SAARC member states (SMSs) are cumulatively crude oil deficit nations with minuscule oil reserves and production. Of all the SMSs, only India has significant oil production, which still falls significantly short of domestic demand. Therefore oil requirements to meet the energy needs of SMSs are met mainly through imports from the Middle East.

In addition, cumulative refining capacities fall well short of refined petroleum product requirements across SMSs. Amongst SMSs, only India has significant refining capacity, not only making it self-sufficient but also a net exporter of diesel and petrol to other SAARC nations, including Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. However, India is also dependent on the Middle East to meeting its LPG demand. None of the other SMS with refining capacities are self-sufficient in meeting domestic petroleum products demand.

Amongst the various petroleum products, diesel is key, with demand from the power sector (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Nepal) and transportation sector (India, Bhutan) driving demand growth

The purpose of this study is to focus on the opportunities and challenges associated with the energy business pertaining to crude oil and petroleum products in the SAARC region, to review the prevailing business regimes and the relevant regulatory and legal frameworks of the SAARC member states, to examine relevant international and regional best practices and their relevance and applicability to the region, as well as to assess options to promote the business/trade of crude oil and petroleum products in the region.

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The concern for increase in greenhouse gases and need for a low carbon economy has been acknowledged by several countries which led to the signing of Paris Agreement in December 2015 envisaging limitation of global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. The Agreement was signed by 195 countries and ratified by 148 countries which also agreed to maintain and communicate National Determined Contributions (NDCs) along with action plans that it intended to achieve in the long term. Decarbonisation action plans that need to be adopted to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and drive new economic opportunities, while improving the quality of life of the citizens in the cities, should address these three key prioritized decarbonisation pathways in energy generation, energy utilization and transportation sector. All these three sectors will influence significant rise in city-level carbon emissions in next five to ten years, primarily driven by accelerated urbanization and economic growth.

According to a World Bank report, the region will witness a firm economic growth of 7.1% in 2018 as compared to 6.9% in 2017. Implementation of right mix of policies and reforms will be crucial to achieve the desired growth level. Over the next two years, the SAARC region would be one of the fastest growing regions in the world. The Growth prospect is based on the assumption that the domestic consumption will remain strong, private sector investment will regain momentum and exports will recover. According to South Asia Economic Focus (SAEF), the South Asian region has the potential to exceed the growth rates of East Asia and the Pacific. The region combined has the highest number of young people who have reached working age.

Off-grid Solar PV is a promising solution to meet demand for electricity services of rural households in remote locations in developing countries. Off-grid solar PV systems are applicable for areas without power grid. Currently, such solar PV systems are usually installed at isolated sites where the power grid is far away, such as rural areas or off-shore islands but they may also be installed within the city in situations where it is inconvenient or too costly to tap electricity from the power grid.

After some early success in SAARC Member States, more and more doubts were arisen about the effectiveness and suitability of stand-alone Solar PV systems for rural electrification. There were many organizational, financial and technical problems that appeared in various programmes of household Solar Home Systems (SHS) in the SAARC region.

In this context, SEC had conducted a Study to Investigate the Difficulties for Household Solar Systems in SAARC Region which has helped to assess the situation in SAARC countries and offered practical solutions/recommendations to the public and private sector of Member States.

SAARC Energy Centre (SEC), Islamabad under its approved programme activity for FY 2018, successfully conducted a 2-day SAARC Dissemination Webinar on “Assessment of Resource Potential and Planning for a Demonstration Project Using Run of River Submersible Water Turbine” on 8th to 9th Feb, 2018. Webinar Agenda is available in Annexure I at Page: 10.

SEC, during FY 2017, had completed a comprehensive study on this subject. The study had helped to identify challenges and suggested measures/recommendations for the promotion and development of Hydro Kinetic resource potential in the SAARC Region. The aim of conducting this webinar was to disseminate the outcomes, findings and recommendations of the study report among the Member States.

In SAARC member states, provision of reliable, cheap and environment friendly energy portfolio is one of the major challenges to ensure sustainable development while addressing the increasingly pressing issue of deteriorating climate. Economic development, increasing population and urbanization are main drivers of energy demand in SAARC member states. According to key world energy statistics 2017, the primary energy supply has nearly increased from 2571 MTOE to 6510 MTOE between 1990 and 2015 in Asian countries. The share of SAARC member states in energy consumption will continue to increase within foreseeable future.

Coal contributes 39.3 % in global electricity generation and will continue to play a major role in delivering secure energy within in coming decades. Although, the share of coal in the energy mix is declining in developed countries like USA, China and UK, SAARC member states are planning to enhance the coal based power generation as the region has abundant coal resources. Particularly, the expansion of coal fired power generation in India and Pakistan will account for the major increase in coal utilization in the region. Governments of Bangladesh and Afghanistan have also planned to expand coal based power generation in near future. The region is all set for sustained coal utilization in decades to come and coal is going to play an important role in poverty elevation in the region. However, upcoming coal fired power plants in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India will only accounts for ~10% of India’s coal utilization.

The role of clean coal technologies is significant in SAARC region as compared to other parts of the world. This report provides an overview of existing clean coal technologies, their application and potential in SAARC region.

SAARC Energy Centre (SEC) proposes development of large regional hydropower plant in south Asia focusing huge hydropower potential of Nepal. The member states Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh would be benefited from the cheap power generated in Nepal would earn foreign exchange and can overcome trade deficit. In 2016, the Government of Nepal announced that the Karnali Chisapani hydropower project would be developed through a Multi stakeholder partnership approach that comprises investors from across the SAARC Region. In this back drop, SEC intended to review the feasibility study of Karnali (Chisapani) Multipurpose project (10,800 MW) carried out in 1989 and update the feasibility study to develop the project as a regional power project.

In year 2017, SEC conducted a study for the review of the feasibility studies of Karnali Chissapani Hydro Power Project of 10,800 MW, in Nepal; to define the terms of reference for updating the existing feasibility study. The study outcome, apart from other aspects, includes the way forward to undertake the project as a regional power project benefiting multiple Member States.

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SEC Study ‘Harmonizing Transmission Grid Codes of SAARC Member States to Combat Regulatory Challenges for Intra-region Power Trading / Interconnections’ undertaken in the FY 2015, Indian Grid Code is more stringent in almost all dimensions and also provides wider details as far as planning criteria is concerned. Indian transmission planning criteria specifies security and reliability limits to be considered at planning stage which are more stringent than the operational security and reliability limits. A planning margin is specified for voltage limits, thermal loading limits of lines and transformers, reactive capabilities of generators, fault levels etc. Grid Codes of other SAARC Member States do not specify conditions on planning margin and only specify operational security limits as planning criteria. It is high time that other Member States capitalize on the Indian success stories in the maximum possible extent.

SAARC Energy Centre (SEC) undertook the short term, in-house Study through its Action Program FY 2017 to assess the prevailing planning criteria of all the Member States, where applicable, to assess its currency in comparison to the best utility practices and suggest potential changes with respect to parameters including, but not limited to, renewable energy intermittency, fuel diversity, ever increasing load quantum and regional interconnectivity leading to SAARC Energy Ring. The Study is an in-house effort by Mr. Salis Usman, Program Leader (Energy Trade) and was peer-reviewed by Ms. Samreen Fatima Shirazi, Senior Team Lead, Power Planners International (Pvt.) Limited. Overall purpose of the Study is to sensitize the SAARC Member States on the best regional as well as international practices with respect to planning criteria which is an important regulation included in the Grid Code.

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Major objective of this in-house study is to define a set of minimum/vital/standard data and information for and establishment of SAARC Regional Power Interconnections and Power Trading via facilitation and implementation of the SAARC Framework Agreement on Energy Cooperation (Electricity).

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The study was commissioned as a joint activity of SEC and SAARC Arbitration Council(SARCO). It was awarded to Mr. Kevin Lee, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore.

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In order to highlight the importance of an optimized power generation mix in South Asia, SAARC Energy Centre (SEC) initiated this short term, Study ―Optimum Power Generation Mix for Sustainable Power Sector in South Asia‖ through its Action Program FY 2015. The study outcome is expected to ensure efficient usage of the available generation capacity and to increase overall efficiency of power system of SAARC Member States.

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Transport sector is one of the largest consumers of energy; it is indeed the largest consumer of petroleum-based fuels. All SAARC Member States are net importers of petroleum products. Continuously growing transport sector in the SAARC Member States has been constantly exerting pressure on the oil dependence as well as resulting in environmental externalities. One of the measures to relax the dependence on the petroleum products and thereby mitigate the environmental impacts from the conventional ICE vehicles is to increase the use of electric vehicles.

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Despite relatively large electric power potential endowed comprising of huge hydropower potential (estimated installed capacity of 294,330 MW); thermal power potential (coal reserves of 108,961 million tons) ; gas power potential (95 Tcf of natural gas reserve) and a large renewable energy potential base, SAARC region is facing acute power shortages leading to frequent and long outages. This shows SAARC region is rich in potential but weak in cooperation and coordination of electricity trading among its Member States. In the past various studies were carried out on energy resources potential, opportunities and challenges of electricity trading but till now, there is no any significant study carried out on transmission and sub-station grid codes, grid codes' parity and grid harmonization of the SAARC member states.

Though all the SAARC Member States use same frequency of power generation and transmission, they don’t have uniform grid code of power transmission. Therefore, time has come now to think it deeply towards making the concept of SAARC regional grid technically viable. Till now, only Bhutan-India and Bangladesh-India have become successful in developing synchronous transmission interconnections whereas Nepal hasn't got any success in converting its radial feeders into synchronous links while importing power from India. This shows how much are the SAARC regional states lacking in planning and implementing synchronous transmission ties even bilaterally. But, while talking about the whole region, our appetite will never be fulfilled till we achieve multilateral synchronous power transmission interconnections. Therefore, to provide impetus towards making the concept of SAARC regional grid techno-economically feasible, a study about existing grid codes in all the SAARC member states and ways to make them compatible for synchronous grid interconnections without disturbing dynamic stability of the overall power system of SAARC region is essentially required.

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The SEC Impact Assessment Study involved a massive exercise of seeking feedback from a wide range of stakeholders who have remained associated with SEC as experts, participants in its various programs, representatives of respective departments of the SAARC Member States. The input based assessment of SEC activities was further supplemented with personal interviews of a selected group of such stakeholders and SEC staff members.

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This is an in house activity to implement the recommendations made in the report of Impact Study which was conducted in FY 2015 by an independent team of experts. An activity matrix and prioritized Action list were developed for implementation purpose. SEC has started implementation of the recommendations. For certain actionable items, in house brain storming and ownership sessions have been organized (e.g. finalizing SEC Strategic Plan 2017-21, Vision, Mission, Enhancement of thematic areas etc.). The implementation is completed by October 2016. Mr. Ihsanullah Marwat, Research Fellow (Energy Efficiency) delivered a detailed presentation about the recommendations made to the Governing Board.

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SEC has organised a 2-day video conference to disseminate study report of Feasibility Study for Setting up SAARC Regional/Sub-regional LNG Terminals among the SAARC Member States in August 2016 in Islamabad. The desktop study was conducted by SAARC Energy Centre (SEC) in the year of 2015 under a contract to look at the current status of natural gas and LNG industries in the SAARC member countries, with a view to identify potential areas of mutual cooperation including setting up regional / sub-regional LNG import terminals. While the material has been reviewed by outside experts, the views and opinion expressed in the study report. The report is meant to facilitate discussion and identify specific cooperation areas for promotion of regional energy cooperation especially in the new and fast growing area of LNG imports.

The study reviewed the existing tariff structure of Renewable Energy with specific emphasis on distributed generation projects in SAARC Member States and gave guidelines for the equipment selection, required import facilities, technology development, installation and commissioning of equipment for options such as Net-metering, Banking and Wheeling. It also suggested operating guidelines to distribution companies for licensing, certifying and permission of Net-metering, Banking and Wheeling equipment before integrating into the national grids of respective SAARC Member States.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that roughly 85% of the people without electricity live in rural areas in developing countries. The IEA predicts that 1.4 billion people will still lack access to electricity in 2030 unless new approaches and policies are adopted, most of whom in South Asia and Africa. The study was proposed to provide keys to successful implementation of rural electrification policies in SAARC Member States.

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The main objective of this study on “Pricing Mechanisms for Electricity in SAARC Member States” is to share the experiences in the area of electricity pricing among the Member States and promotion of energy trade in the region. The institutional, legal and regulatory frameworks for electricity sector of the Member States are also examined under this study.

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