Government approves Energy conservation plan.

Defence Minister Khwaja Asif along with other federal ministers held a press conference and announced the approved National Energy Conservation Plan — a policy aimed at saving energy. The government wants to reduce the circular debt on the energy sector which has increased from Rs2.253 trillion in September last year to Rs2.437 trillion, increasing by Rs185bn.

Addressing the media, he said, the timings of the wedding halls will be limited to 10pm while the markets are to shut down at 8:30 pm. “The policy will save us Rs.60billion” he said.

He also mentioned that an import duty on ‘inefficient fans’ will be increased and that after Feb 2023, bright bulbs would not be manufactured and additional taxes will be imposed on imported ones, inefficient fans use around 120-130 watts of electricity while globally the fans available use  60-80 watts.  “We can save Rs22 billion by doing this”.

Furthermore, in order to save electricity, the streetlights will also be used alternatively which could save the government almost Rs. 4 billion.

For conserving the gas, he said that the conical geysers will replace the regular geysers as the use lesser gas and talked about the government introducing e-bikes which would not require oil to operate. He mentioned, “Pakistan is using oil worth $3 billion annually.”

Khwaja Asif mentioned that plan is to be implemented immediately, both the Prime Minister, Shahbaz Sharif and President Arif Alvi have approved the plan and are in agreement to it. They even gave their suggestions to help in conservation of energy.

He said that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has told all federal departments to decrease their energy consumption by 30 per cent.

“Today, symbolically, no lights were switched on in the cabinet room. All the work was done under the natural sunlight.”