Perspectives on Pakistan’s Energy Problems

Abstract

The scientific and industrial revolution in the world was only possible with the availability of abundant inanimate energy sources and the development of technology to employ them. In fact energy consumption and economic growth are closely interrelated as clearly demonstrated by the disparity in energy production and consumption figures shown in Table 1 for the developing and the developed regions of the world. There is a serious imbalance in the existing distribution of energy consumption in these two regions, as 86 percent of the world annual energy is used by about 36 percent of the population of the rich countries, while a meagre 14 percent goes to the 64 percent of the people living in the energy-deficient developing countries¹. As far as production of fuels is concerned, the latter region produces hardly 15 percent of the total energy, the oil-exporting developing countries contributing another 24 percent, which essentially finds its way to the industrialized countries of the world. This pattern, if not modified soon, will seriously undermine the future economic development of the poorer countries. In fact, the world is facing today a serious energy crisis which is deepening year after year and endangering the prosperity of the industrialized countries and threatening to cripple the economic growth of the poorer countries.