Pakistan is a energy deficit country like most other South Asian countries with inadequate investment in the electricity sector and the distribution infrastructure.The cause of the energy crisis in the country is due to massive corruption and misgovernance , a theme which will be familiar to citizens of India as well.Pakistan has been looking at investments from the Chinese power companies in the hydro and wind sectors to boost electricity generation.However these investments take time and some may never come to fruition.However Pakistanis are now turning towards cheap Chinese solar panels to beat the high electricity tariffs and dependence on expensive diesel generators and UPS systems.

Coal India the monopoly producer of Coal in India and responsible for providing almost half of India’s Energy Requirement is a very inefficienct organiazation is well know.Corruption and pilferage of massive amounts of coal is a well known fact to all industry participants.In fact stealing of coal is a major livelihood for lakhs of poor Indians in coal belt areas.What is not well known is that Coal India has flouted all norms of environment and conservation.It has not restored sites of open cast and underground mining leading to massive losses for the local environment and citizens.Sand meant to fill up the old mines has been sold in the market for profits.RTI application has shown that this government maharatna has been negligent towards it duties in a huge scale.No wonder there are so many protests for land acquisitions by industry and the government given the degradation and pollution that these companies do.

South Korean Conglomerates LG,Samsung,Hyundai and Hanwha have made massive investments in solar energy production in the last couple of years.Encoraged by the Korean government to become a force in the Green Energy area in the future,Korean giant chaebols have invested in almost all areas of cleantech like Electric Vehicles,Wind Energy,Solar Energy,Energy Storage etc.While Western companies fall like flies in the face of the Chinese onslaught of super low pricing,Koreans are holding their own and want to take fight into the Chinese camp.

Adani Power,which is a leading Indian electricity company and part of the Adani Group is set to invest big money in the solar power in India.The company plans to set up 140 MW of energy capacity according to news reports with an investment of $600 million.Given the current costs of solar equipment and solar panels ,the price tag looks high at almost $3.5 million/MW when the current prices are more like $2 million/MW for large power plants in low cost locations like India.

JNNSM Phase 2 recieved almsot 8 times the bids with 2500 MW worth of bids out of which around 350 MW was selected for providing Feed in Tarifffs with the average tariff of Rs 8.77 or 17.5c/Kwh .Note India’s execution record has not been great with only 400 MW solar capacity reached in 2011 against a target of more than 1000 MW.However weaker and unknown players have gone out of this business and the winners this time look more likely to construct these solar power plants.No doubt a massive glut of solar panels in the world with prices as low as 80-90c/watt helping .Compare that to prices of solar panels which were more than $2/watt last time.

This new plan has following features

1) Reduce the Power Purchasing Agreement Tenure to 5 years from 25 years.This would make it easy to change the prices of power purchased to reflect the changed realities

2) Some sort of fuel cost indexation for electricity tariffs .The reason is that prices of imported coal has risen dramatically which has made the large UMPP get stuck because the revenues don’t meet the costs.

This plan will take 6 months to be implemented as the government talks with stakeholders like states which are reluctant to change the power prices decided in the PPA with the earlier UMPP being built by Tata Power and Reliance Power in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.