BE2C2 — With a huge waste to energy potential in the country, such as the Landhi Cattle Colony aka Bhains Colony (to name one) in country’s economic powerhouse, Kuwait’s national company Enertech and Sindh government have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for a major investment in the southern province’s crisis-prone power sector.
With the only one power generation thru distribution utility outfit called K-Electric, the country’s financial hub (even rest of Sindh) with growing population and waste creation, appears one of the low hanging fruits for both public and private partners.
According to sources, the MOU signed between Enertech and PPP-led government in Sindh will enable Enertech Holdings to invest in ‘Waste to Energy’ projects, starting with a 50MW power project in Karachi – scalable upwards to a mutually agreed capacity – as well as in other municipalities of Sindh that are mutually identified and agreed for implementation.
Located near Pak Steel’s Bin Qasim Town, the Landhi Cattle Colony is huge– one of the largest cattle farms in the world, and hosts more than 250,000 (one estimate says 400,000) high breed buffaloes and cows. Daily an average animal excrete in the farm totals approximately 38 to 40 tons. “They are being embezzled and frittered away into the Arabian sea consistently,” says a Business Recorder report. A 2015 USAID report says around 130,000 Cu. meters of raw sewage is also pumped into the sea daily by Karachi city.
Surrounding Karachi there are also said to be around 700,000 more buffalo in the nearby rural areas all supplying fresh milk to the population.
According to experts, Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, also generates more than 13,000 tons of municipal waste daily which are hauled to three sanitary landfill sites which themselves need rehab and augmentation.
Enertech, in collaboration with the provincial government, will take the lead and liaise with all relevant provincial and federal authorities to get the required approvals for the projects.
Sindh reportedly leads in public-private partnerships, specially in the power sector, one of its Achilles Heels (other being water particularly in Karachi)– notwithstanding hiccups and mismanagement, experts say.
A source tells the federal government has been pushing Sindh government for Bhains Colony waste-to-energy and other residual supply chains as part of ‘livable city’ initiative.
The matter however is swinging between policy matter and tradeoff, said one expert.
Meanwhile, a wind/solar hybrid power project augmented with gas generation would be launched to supply continuous power to Dhabeji Economic Zone, starting with 50MW and scalable upwards. Similarly, off-grid microgrids would be installed in the mutually-identified remote villages of Sindh.
