Amid a drop in nuclear and renewable energy sources, the country’s power generation cost jumped by nearly 20% year-on-year in November as the country relied more on expensive fossil fuels, The News reported citing data from a brokerage house on Thursday.
The average cost of electricity production rose to Rs7.17 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) last month, compared with Rs5.99 a year earlier, an increase of 19.7%, according to Arif Habib Limited (AHL).
The brokerage house said the higher fuel cost was mainly due to a decline in nuclear, wind and solar-based generation, which are cheaper and cleaner than coal, gas and oil.
“Additionally, the fuel cost for local coal-based generation increased by 55% year-on-year. Along with this, the fuel cost for Regasified Liquid Natural Gas (RLNG) and gas-based also increased by 17% year-on-year and 38% year-on-year, respectively,” it added.
The rising cost of power generation has added to the woes of Pakistan’s consumers, who are already grappling with high inflation and sluggish economic growth.
However, on a monthly basis, the power generation cost fell 13.2% in November, as compared to an average cost of Rs8.26 in October, when the country faced a severe gas shortage that forced it to use more expensive furnace oil for electricity production.
From 8,367 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in November of last year to 7,547 GWh in November of this year, the country’s power generation decreased by 9.8% annually. The primary cause of the year-over-year decline in power generation was a 32.8% decline in nuclear power output, which in November was recorded at 1,572 GWh.
Apart from nuclear, the year-on-year decrease was also attributed to a decline in RLNG (21.1%), gas (41.5%), and wind (6.2%) generation. On a monthly basis, power generation decreased by 21.2%, as compared to 9,572 GWh in October.
During the first five months of the current fiscal year (July-November), power generation increased by 1.8 %year-on-year to 61,258 GWh, compared with 60,153 GWh in the same period last year.
With 36.5% of the generation mix in November, hydrogen was the most common energy source, followed by nuclear (20.8%) and domestic coal (13.1%).
Among renewables, wind, solar, and bagasse generation amounted to 2%, 0.7%, and 0.4% of the generation, respectively.
