The News quoted Mr Raja Riaz Ahmad senior minister of Punjab as saying that the province is rich in coal reserves of 235 million tonne, which could help improve energy efficiency with the establishment of new power generation houses.
According to a handout, he was talking to a group of investors and industrialists at his residence on Wednesday.
Mr Ahmad said that keeping in view availability of coal, the government had identified raw sites based on indigenous coal near the Sunder Industrial Estate in Lahore and three other cities including Faisalabad, Multan and Sialkot, each having capacity of 50 MW electricity.
Mr Raja Riaz said that the coal reserves were available in four districts, namely Jhelum, Chakwal, Khushab and Mianwali.
He said that Punjab coal was identified as sub bituminous, adding that Punjab coal has low ash and high sulfur and is considered suitable for power generation. He added that investment in the sector would be implemented on Built Own Operate basis or under public private partnership.
Mr Raja Riaz said that as many as seven feasibility studies of the hydro power projects by the private sector having accumulative capacity of 123 watts had also been completed by the Punjab Irrigation and Power Department.
Besides, he said that the Punjab government was according high priority to the water resources development and management.
He added that under this policy, the Punjab Power Development Board had been setup to provide one window operation facility to promote private sector partnership in power generation.
He said that the Punjab Power Development Board was playing a key role in implementation of power projects up to 50 watts capacity, assisting private investors in obtaining consents and licenses from various agencies and facilitating the regulatory authority Nepra in determining and approval of tariff for new power projects.
Mr Riaz concluded with the comments that India government was already implementing a holistic strategy to get rid of load shedding and construction of two new dams in the country would be launched soon.
(Sourced from The News)
