Only Sri Lanka and Maldives balance demand and supply rates:

Call to alleviate power shortages among SAARC nations

By Indunil THENUWARA after a tour of Nepal

South Asia is home to over 1.6 billion people, about 22 percent of the total global population. It consists of a land mass of 5,130,746km2. However, it is the least integrated region in the world and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is the only regional bloc which has no energy sharing agreements despite having huge potential for such arrangements.

The region remains energy-starved with Sri Lanka and Maldives being the only countries which are currently balanced in their energy demand and supply rates. All other countries including regional power India suffer from a huge power deficit, Director of Nepal Electricity Authority's Department of Power Trade, Sher Singh Bhat told a group of SAARC media personnel who visited the Kathmandu electricity transmission substation as part of a recent media program in Nepal.

He cited increasing deficits in the power sector, dominance of a single fuel, limited use of renewable energy sources and high dependence on traditional sources and the lack of energy improvement methods, funds, proper policies and framework as some of the reasons which have led to the energy crisis.

"It might deepen further, resulting in huge impacts on economic growth and poverty levels of the region if proper measures are not introduced to solve the issue," he said. The energy crisis can affect gender issues too, as it is mostly women who have to work in the dark in their kitchens late at night, Bhat said.

He described the India/Bhutan interconnection as the only synchronised exchange in the region which can transmit power. Though the India/Nepal transmission line will also exchange power, it won't be a synchronised system. India and Bangladesh also signed an agreement in 2010 for the cross-border transmission of power. Together with the existing and planned connectivity between India and Bhutan and the planned transmission project between India and Sri Lanka, these will create the infrastructure for sub-regional power trade, he said.

Bhat said that since all regional power sharing interconnections will run through India, the regional power needs to be open for such plans to succeed. Initiatives also have to be made on the improvement of software and infrastructure related to energy for these measures to bear fruit, he said.

The World Bank is concentrating on improving the energy resources in the region alongside various energy centres, taskforces and expert groups from the region.

Addressing the journalism workshop, World Bank Country Manager for Nepal Tahseen Sayed said: "The Bank has, as its priority, electricity and energy; trade, trade facilitation and transport; and water and natural resources management. An example is its approving financing for the first high voltage electricity transmission line between India and Nepal, which is capable of trading 1,000MW of power, potentially relieving Nepal's crippling energy shortages in the short term and help develop the country's vast hydro power resources for export to the region in the long run."

Feasibility studies have also confirmed the technical and economic viability of exporting electricity surpluses during the summer from existing hydro power plants in Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic as a solution to the power shortages in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, India and Bangladesh are exploring transit and trade opportunities around hydro power and gas resources in India's north east.

She said that trade in energy within the South Asian region is almost non-existent. However, Afghanistan and Nepal could together produce 100,000MW of hydro power, alleviate the crippling power shortages which have led to the loss of many jobs in the region, reduce the growing dependence in the region on fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions.

World Bank Chief Economist for South Asia Kalpana Kochhar, who joined the workshop via video-conference from Washington DC, said the massive energy shortages experienced by all SAARC countries except Sri Lanka hamper the achievement of their economic development goals. One third of the global population without access to the electricity supply are from South Asia which is the poorest region in the world, she said.

"SAARC countries suffer from a massive demand and supply gap in the energy sector and experience daily power cuts in varying degrees. Only Sri Lanka where 80 percent of the population has access to the national grid doesn't currently suffer from energy shortages." she said.

The population that remains without electricity in the SAARC region, where the rate of electrification is only 68.5 percent, is 493 million (according to 2009 figures). The global electrification rate is 80.5 percent while the rate in developing countries is 74.7 percent.

However, a renewed interest is being shown in the region with regard to hydro power generation with new projects being earmarked in Nepal and Bhutan.

The World Bank is also working on boosting the power generation in the region, Kochhar said. Optimising the region's power supply through more regional investments is the key to solving the energy crisis, she said.

The journalism workshop on 'Regional Cooperation in South Asia' was organised by the World Bank and the Thomson Reuters Foundation and was held over three days. Journalists representing media organisations from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan participated in the program.