Hydropower exploitation for Pakistan’s sustainable development: A SWOT analysis considering current situation, challenges, and prospects

Author links open overlay panelMuhammad Sibtain ^a, Xianshan Li ^a, Hassan Bashir ^b, Muhammad Imran Azam ^c

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Highlights

The paper analyzes the current energy crisis of Pakistan, the scenario of different power generation resources, the development history of hydropower, existing and installed potential, and policies related to hydropower.

The review conducts a comprehensive SWOT analysis to determine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats regarding hydropower.

Strengths and opportunities include tremendous untapped potential, clean and cheap source, decrease in the dependence on fossil fuels.

Weaknesses and threats include high capital cost, lengthy projects completion, the effect of seasonal variations, vague policies, transboundary water resources, economic and political instability.

The paper emphasizes the full exploitation of hydropower resources to lessen the energy crisis.

Abstract

Pakistan has not fully harnessed the capacity of its vast hydropower potential for electricity generation. It depends on imported and local fossil fuels to fulfill its energy demands, which consume a significant portion of the country’s economy. Hydropower can provide an economical, renewable, clean, and secure source of energy for the country. The potential benefits and prospects of hydropower for Pakistan require a comprehensive review of the hydropower sector to investigate the true resource potential and its development, considering the associated pros and cons. Therefore, the review work examines hydropower utilization in Pakistan using SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. The strengths include an enormous resource potential, sustainable energy source, and a well-established technology; the weaknesses include substantial capital investment, time-taking project completion, degradation of the reservoir over time, and the effect of seasonal variations. The opportunities include increasing demand-supply gap, 93% unexploited potential, water storage dams, energy security, rising concerns for climate change; the threats include economic and political instability, dependence on foreign investment and fossil fuels, transboundary location of water resources, irregular and vague energy policies. The SWOT analysis shows that despite having severe issues, hydropower is still a priority source of secure, cheap, and clean energy for the country with abundant resource potential and a properly managed technology.

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Keywords

Pakistan

Hydropower

Energy crisis

Renewable energy

SWOT analysis

1. Introduction

Energy is the basic need for a society and plays a significant role in socio-economic progress [1,2]. The energy demand of the world is increasing rapidly due to rapid growth in industrialization and population. The increase in energy requirement is depleting conventional energy resources, including petroleum, coal, and nuclear, due to their excessive consumption. Fossil fuels are also responsible for environmental pollution and troubling the balance of the ecosystem [2]. Fossil fuels are the primary source of power generation in Pakistan, and resultantly, the power sector of Pakistan is the main contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [3]. During the year 2017, 54.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) were emitted due to the use of fossil fuels used for electricity and heat generation purposes [4]. Apart from the emission of CO₂, fossil fuels based power plants also produce noise, vibration, heat, and release sulfur dioxide (SO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and particulate matter [5]. The presence of CO₂ in the atmosphere causes global warming, while NOx depletes the ozone layer [6]. SO₂ causes damage to materials and vegetation, produces acid rain and harms human health, and may cause impaired visibility [7]. Air pollution results in the deaths of 12,000 people of Pakistan annually [8]. On the other hand, non-conventional renewable energy resources (RERs) such as hydro, wind, solar, ocean tidal, geothermal are inexhaustible, abundant, and nonpolluting [2]. Many countries of the world are moving towards RERs due to the depletion of fossil fuels and the increasing rate of GHG emissions [9]. Hydropower fulfills 19% of the planet’s energy demand, making it the most significant form of RER for electric power generation globally [10].

Hydropower is a cheap, clean, and renewable source of electricity [[11], [12], [13]]. The conventional fossil fuel-based power plants only have an efficiency of 50%, while the efficiency of modern hydropower plants is about 85% [14,15]. Moreover, depending on the head and water flow rate, hydropower can be harnessed both on a large and small scale for power generation purposes [16,17]. Therefore, hydropower is the most significant RER in the world.

Pakistan is facing an energy crisis mainly due to insufficient additions of electricity in the power system. Rapid industrialization, population growth, and a high rate of urbanization represent some of the contributing factors to the energy dilemma. The energy crisis has affected the country’s gross domestic product, paralyzed production, and caused the social life of citizens to suffer. The energy shortage has also contributed to unemployment due to the closure of factories. Now, the energy crisis has become a national security issue in Pakistan [18].

Pakistan is facing the challenge of increasing electricity demand being a growing economy, which cannot be fulfilled from its currently installed power generation capacity [19]. The reported electricity shortfall during peak load hours is more than 5000 MW [20]. As a result, load shedding is the only option to meet the demand. In the past, the growth and development of Pakistan suffered from energy side bottlenecks [21]. Fossil fuel-based resources, including oil and natural gas, dominate the power sector of Pakistan, but the country possesses minimal indigenous fossil fuel reserves. Therefore, the demands of these fuels are met through the import of hydrocarbons, making the electricity sector the second most prominent user of imported oil after the transport sector. The country is blessed with vast reserves of RERs, including hydro, wind, and solar [22]. The exploitation of hydropower potential provides benefits of power generation and also acts as water storage reservoirs for the agriculture and fishing sectors [23].

Fossil fuels, both local and imported ones, share a significant portion of the energy sector of Pakistan. Conventional energy resources consume 14.5 billion US dollars of the country’s economy, and Pakistan spends 20% of the foreign exchange on importing fossil fuels [24]. The careful harnessing of the tremendous hydropower potential can provide the prospects of energy security [21]. Proper exploitation of hydropower potential can provide a renewable and indigenous energy source [25,26]. Hydropower development also provides a strategic approach to manage water resources for other purposes like irrigation, domestic use, industry, and flood control [25]. Hydropower can play a role in the eco-friendly and sustainable energy mix of Pakistan [26]. The presence of a proper financial support system helps to increase the production of clean energy. The selection of a site is an important requirement when designing hydropower projects since it also manages other functions, including flood control and supply of drinking water. The electricity generation from a hydropower plant follows simple principles. Small hydropower (SHP) systems are cheaper than mega hydropower projects that involve the resettlement of population and a lot of planning; therefore, SHP is becoming a more popular source of renewable energy (RE) [27].

The recent energy crisis of Pakistan started in 2006–2007, since then, the electricity sector is facing a continuous increase in demand and supply gap, which is forcing the power generation entities to supply more electricity. According to the estimates, the energy demand of Pakistan will increase three times by the year 2050, while the increase in the generation capacity is not comparable to meet the demand. Hydropower and fossil fuels represent the primary power generation sources of the country. The gas and oil reserves of the country are depleting at an alarming rate, and they will be exhausted after 10 and 19 years, respectively. The RE potential of 167.7 GW can be utilized to meet all the energy demands of Pakistan, which has not been exploited productively so far; due to a lack of infrastructure and policies [28]. Pakistan can utilize the potential of all of its RERs, including microhydel/canal fall [29].

The prospects of hydropower generation exist in all parts of Pakistan [30]. The Indus basin contributes to a significant portion of this hydropower potential [31,32]. The hydropower resources exist in six regions of Pakistan; Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Baluchistan, and Sindh [33,34]. These areas have the potential for large-scale hydropower projects with capacity ranging from 100 MW to 7000 MW [35]. The country remained unsuccessful in increasing the share of hydropower in the primary energy mix due to the existence of specific market and non-market hurdles [30]. Different studies exist which investigate several aspects of the hydropower sector in Pakistan. The study in [36] investigates the present situation and prospects of hydropower in Pakistan while the work done in [37] considers challenges related to renewable energies, including SHP. The authors in [18,[38], [39], [40], [41]] highlights the barriers related to RER exploitation in Pakistan; the review work in [42] explains the issues and challenges for hydropower to act as a green energy source while the author in [31] considers the prospects of RE in Pakistan.

The global aim is to lessen the carbon component of energy as an improvement strategy to cope with the issue of climate change for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG-7) on clean and cheap energy. The RE provides incremental financial resources and contributes to the reduction of GHG emissions. Despite several challenges, hydropower remains a foremost RE choice to achieve RE goals with supplementary advantages of storing water for farming and drinking purposes [43]. Due to the prospects as mentioned earlier and the potential benefits of hydropower, the Government of Pakistan (GoP) is giving a particular focus on the development of hydropower projects in Pakistan, intending to increase the share of hydropower in the future capacity mix of Pakistan.

Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the full potential of hydropower resources of Pakistan, their utilization, challenges related to their development, as well as consideration of other aspects like policy, economic and political matters. This paper tries to answer the following questions. What are the fortes of the hydropower utilization and development for Pakistan? What are the weaknesses that may obstruct the growth of hydropower? What are the prospects that exist in persuading the promotion of hydropower? What threats may degrade the exploitation and utilization of hydropower? To fulfill the task, this study utilizes SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to examine internal strengths and weaknesses, in addition to the external opportunities and threats for the hydropower capacity expansion in Pakistan. Owing to the criticality of the issue, this paper explains the barriers and challenges related to the development of the hydropower sector over the last several decades. The sustainability of the energy sector has been studied in the past using SWOT analysis, and SWOT models are progressively gaining importance [44,45]. SWOT analysis is also employed extensively for energy planning by researchers [46]. Although some previous works exist considering different scenarios and performance of the hydropower sector in Pakistan, however, previous studies have mostly examined the situation of the electricity sector or renewable resources of Pakistan as a whole. Still, to the best of our knowledge, previous studies lack such a comprehensive review of the hydropower sector covering all essential aspects. The primary source of information regarding the power sector of Pakistan is the reports published by the government [47]; therefore, these reports have been consulted as the primary source of data for analyzing the hydropower sector of Pakistan. Moreover, the data used in this study is also collected from peer-reviewed publications and reports published at the international level as well as relevant data available at different online resources. This review reveals the essential aspects of hydropower resources of Pakistan and provides the basis for further studies in the hydropower sector of Pakistan. This work will enhance understanding in the field of the hydropower sector and will facilitate the process of policy and decision-making concerning the energy-environment-economic-social nexus in the country.

The present study divides the paper into five sections. Section 1 introduces the need for hydropower resources and the scope of the present study. In contrast, an overview of the hydropower sector is given in Section 2 in the context of the development history, major hydropower projects, organizations, and policies for hydropower development. Section 3 presents a SWOT analysis of hydropower in Pakistan by analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Section 4 discusses the countermeasures and recommendations to promote hydropower generation, while the last section concludes the study by providing a summary for quick understanding.

2. Overview of hydropower sector

2.1. Development history

The development of hydropower in Pakistan starts in 1925, with the establishment of 1 MW hydropower station at Renala. The Malakand-I hydropower plant with a power generation capacity of 1.7 MW was constructed, after a decade of Renala hydropower project, with capacity further increased to 20 MW later on [33]. The installed electrical power capacity of Pakistan at the time of its creation in 1947 was 60 MW for its 31.5 million people. In 1953, the Dargai hydropower station having a generation capacity of 20 MW was constructed. In 1958, the hydropower generation capacity of Pakistan was 119 MW [34]. Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) was the sole organization in the early period of Pakistan, responsible for managing electrical power generation, transmission, and distribution activities. Moreover, its duty was also to supervise the tasks of water supply, irrigation, and flood control, etc. Electricity was a vital requirement during the early period of Pakistan [48].

India and Pakistan signed the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in 1960 with the help of the World Bank. According to IWT, Pakistan utilizes the water of three rivers that include Indus, Chenab, and Jhelum [33]. The installed power generation capacity increased from 119 MW to 636 MW in the year 1959; further, the generation capacity became 2500 GWh by the year 1964–1965. The number of electricity consumers also increased to 688 thousand by the year 1965. By the year 1959, 609 villages had access to electricity, and this number rose to 1882 communities in the year 1965 [48]. After 1965, a lot of development occurred in the hydropower sector due to the construction of 1000 MW Mangla, 240 MW Warsak, and 3478 MW Tarbela hydropower generating stations [33]. This rapid progress in hydropower generation improved all sectors of life, including economic, social, industrial, and agricultural.

Unfortunately, further development in the hydropower sector was prolonged, after these capacity additions. WAPDA, which owns most of the installed hydropower capacity of Pakistan [49], remained unsuccessful in harnessing the hydropower potential. Resultantly, the installed hydropower capacity of Pakistan always remained below its potential [50,50], and Pakistan is facing an energy crisis for decades. A revised power policy was approved by the government in 1994, with special incentives for the private investors of thermal power plants, to fulfill the growing energy demand of the country [51]. After this successful experience, the hydropower policy of 1995 was announced to promote private investment in the hydropower sector. However, the first private hydropower project of 84 MW was commissioned in 2013 [52].

The government has planned to increase the hydropower generation capacity to 32,660 MW by the year 2030 from 6460 MW that was in the year 2005 under the energy security plan. This plan allows provinces to develop hydropower projects on the irrigation networks under public-private partnerships to accomplish the goal of the energy security plan [53].

2.2. Major hydropower projects

The details of major hydropower projects in operation are provided in Table 1, whereas Table 2 summarizes hydropower projects under construction, and Table 3 shows hydropower projects planned.

Table 1. Hydropower projects in operation. Based on the data taken from [48,49].

Power Plant	Location	Type of Power Plant	Installed Capacity (MW)	Commissioning Year
Tarbela	Tarbela, KPK	Reservoir	3478	1977–93
Ghazi Brotha	Ghazi Barotha, Punjab	Run of River	1450	2003–04
Mangla	Mangla, AJ&K	Reservoir	1000	1967–94
Warsak	Warsak, KPK	Reservoir	243	1960–81
Chashma	Chashma, Punjab	Run of River	184	2001
Khan Khwar	Shangla, KPK	Reservoir	72	2012
Allai Khwar	Battagram, KPK	Reservoir	121	2013
Jinnah Hydel	Mianwali, Punjab	Run of River	96	2013
Duber Khwar	Kohistan, KPK	Reservoir	130	2013
Malakand-III	Malakand, KPK	Hydro	81	2008
Laraib Energy	Jhelum River, AJ&K	Hydro	84	2013
SHP Units	Miscellaneous	Reservoir or Run of Canal/river	177	1925–2017
Total			7116

Table 2. Hydropower projects under construction. Based on the data available at [48].

Hydropower Project	Installed Capacity (MW)	Commissioning Year (Expected)
Keyal Khwar	128	2019
Kurram Tangi	83.4	2019
Gorkin-Matiltan	84	2020
Karot	720	2021
Lawi Chitral	69	2021
Suki Kinari	870	2022
Dasu (Stage-I)	2160	2024
Mangla refurbishment and up-gradation	310	2024

Table 3. Hydropower projects of future. Data taken from [48].

Hydropower Project	Identified Capacity (MW)
Bunji Dam	7,100
Diamer Basha Dam	4,500
Tarbela 5th Extension	1,410
Mohmand Dam	800

2.3. Organizations for hydropower development

Government organizations mainly control the hydropower sector of Pakistan. Various organizations supervise the matters related to the hydropower sector development, management, and operation with details, as given in Table 4.

Table 4. Organizations for the development of hydropower [33,34].

Hydropower Project	Identified Capacity (MW)
Bunji Dam	7,100
Diamer Basha Dam	4,500
Tarbela 5th Extension	1,410
Mohmand Dam	800

2.4. Policies for hydropower development

Although Pakistan has a very long history of hydropower, unfortunately, there were no proper policies enforced regarding the hydropower sector until the beginning of the 1990s. Foreseeing the energy sector criticality issues and the prospects of hydropower, the GoP constituted a task force on energy in 1993 to perform the following functions [33]:

Formulation of comprehensive and coordinated energy policy

Devising strategies for the elimination of load shedding

To promote private sector investments

To ensure the exploitation of indigenous resources for the provision of cheap electricity

A robust policy meeting the international standards were required to effectively employ GoP strategies for improving the condition and development of Pakistan’s electricity sector. The other purpose was to transform the power sector into an efficient, resilient, and modern system to improve energy security [33]. Following the year 1993, from time to time, the government announced several policies; however, a dedicated document is not present regarding energy policy in Pakistan. Instead, several policy documents exist simultaneously including Power Policy, Petroleum Policy, Energy Conservation Policy, and RE Policy [54]. The focus of all power policies was to ensure the addition of cheap and clean energy in the energy mix of Pakistan. The Ministry of Water and Power, together with the Energy Wing of Planning Commission, mainly has prepared and implemented these power policies [55]. These policies deal with different aspects of the power sector; however, this paper refers to the hydropower sector only considered in these energy policies. Table 5 summarizes the hydropower aspects considered in these policies.

Table 5. Purpose and salient features of polices.

Policy Purpose and Salient Features Hydel Power Policy 1995 [56] • Encourage the growth of hydropower generation with incentives for private investors.
• Shift reliance from costly fossil fuels to indigenous renewable energy resources (RERs).
• Covers all plants with a capacity of up to 300 MW.
• Considers water rights for plants >300 MW on rivers. National Power Policy 1998 [57] • Encourage power generation through local hydropower resources.
• Privatize and restructure the power market.
• Promote competitive bidding regimes.
• Provide economical, technical, and financial guidelines for hydropower development.
• Build hydropower projects on a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer basis. Policy for Power Generation Projects 2002 [58] • Exploit locally available RERs.
• Produce power at the lowest cost.
• Focus on environmentally friendly electricity generation. Policy for Development of Renewable Energy 2006 [59] • Covers hydropower plants with installed capacities of ≤50 MW.
• Increase the share of renewable energy in the energy mix to 9,700 MW by 2030.
• Launch incentives to attract private-sector investment in RE.
• Promote competition to lower electricity generation costs.
• Enhance productivity, economic well-being, and social welfare in underdeveloped areas.
• Facilitate technical and institutional capacity-building in the RE sector.
• Assist in establishing local manufacturing for RE products. Alternative and Renewable Energy Policy 2011 [60] • Provide a framework to harness the full potential of RE.
• Integrate RE within the country’s energy planning processes.
• Transition toward clean, indigenous RE resources.
• Facilitate private financing in the RE sector. National Power Policy 2013 [61] • Ensure affordable electricity production using RE resources like hydropower.
• Support local and foreign investments in small-to-medium-sized run-of-river hydropower projects.
• Promote efficient electricity production aligned with global standards. Power Generation Policy 2015 [62] • Ensure cheap electricity generation.
• Promote a win-win situation for stakeholders.
• Encourage the use of local resources.
• Conduct power sector activities with environmental protection in mind. Hydropower Policy 2016 [63] • Promote private sector investment with incentives and favorable rates of return.
• Generate electricity at minimal costs.
• Foster green energy development.
• Ensure stakeholder participation and welfare.

3. SWOT analysis of hydropower in Pakistan

SWOT analysis is extensively utilized as a strategic planning tool by academia and industry to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a project. It also highlights the opportunities that can provide benefits and the warning of potential threats that can cause a delay in the realization of set goals. Table 6 presents the framework of the SWOT analysis regarding the hydropower sector in Pakistan, and the subsequent section explains the factors.

Table 6. SWOT analysis framework.

Strengths	Weaknesses
• Clean source of power generation • Cheap and secure source of energy • Abundant hydropower potential of 60 GW • Well-established technology with a power generation history since 1925 • Absence of fuel transportation requirements	• Huge capital investment required • Project completion is time-intensive • Degradation of reservoirs beyond their lifetime • Hydropower generation is affected by seasonal variations
Opportunities • Increasing gap between supply and demand of electricity • Economic and social benefits, including fuel cost savings and job creation • 93% of hydropower potential is still unexploited • Small hydropower sites with a potential of 3100 MW • Water storage dams provide multiple benefits: electricity generation, fisheries development, irrigation, and tourism • Managing flood risks • Existing dams’ power capacity can be increased with minimal investment	Threats • Costly imported fossil fuels dominate thermal energy • Financial barriers: equipment costs, resettlement costs, and lack of foreign investment • Technical barriers: lack of infrastructure and grid instability • Social issues: resettlement and public opposition due to lack of awareness • Environmental impacts: deforestation, water quality changes, and effects on fisheries • Transboundary water resource conflicts • Irregular and vague energy policies • Political instability and corruption • Dysfunctional governmental institutions • Lack of focus on small hydropower (SHP) development

3.1. Strength analysis

3.1.1. Clean source of energy

Presently, fossil fuels (fuel oil, gas, coal) contribute to 65% of the power generation of Pakistan, and any further increase in power generation from these fossil fuels in the future may result in environmental degradation and climatic change issues [49]. Future coal-fired power plants may also increase GHG emissions.

The Climate Risk Index (CRI) of Pakistan from the year 1999 to the year 2018 was 28.83, and the country is included in the list of 10 countries most affected by climate-related risks [64]. Development trend of CO₂ emissions in Pakistan from 1971 to 2017 shows (Fig. 1) an increasing trend, which is also an alarming situation [4].