Beyond the blackouts

The images from the subconscious inculcating the years of evolution and experience lead to the reel of wisdom. The evolution from discovery of fire to using it in industries, the evolution from ice-age to today’s modern age, the evolution of becoming a predator from prey, the evolution of man from fighting for it’s survival to cyber-attacks this whole distance is covered by the human wisdom of finding and utilizing nature’s resources .

The industrial revolution comes and changes the whole existing ecosystems, turning agrarian societies into industrial ones, the villages and cities turn into industrial zones. After industrial revolution machines slowly started to make their own space in the societies. With the passage of time humans started to slowly get dependent on machines .Cars slowly replaced horses, Screens slowly slipped into our lives and now we can’t survive a second without them but there is cost we are paying for this development which is our natural resources and environment.

All the developmental phase is powered by the machines driven by fossil fuels the basic sources of energy. Life in every sector is dependent on the machines and these machines are dependent on energy provided by different kinds of fuels. In short, life is powered by the energy in form of electricity, gas, petrol etc. All the production and consumption chains are strongly dependent on the energy resources especially when a country is in developing stage, they need industries to support their economy again needing more energy. If there is a substance available there is a risk of its extinction or crisis same is the case with energy if there is energy there is a risk of energy crisis.

For the sake of example let’s take natural gas, it’s the basic need of every house and the main driving component of every booming and struggling economy and if there is no natural gas available nothing will go smoothly. China and Japan the two major economic players are also energy insecure in case of their production and energy requirements. The case of developing countries is also same they need more energy to overcome the developmental gap and eventually they will rely on the cheap and easily available sources of energy that are fossil fuels

Now the world is facing the trailers of energy crisis because they have increased demand of energy to terrible limits. Being one of the largest importers of oil and gas Pakistan is also facing the energy crisis too. The Asian Development bank in 2019 claimed that Pakistan is an energy insecure country and is unable to fulfil its energy needs that are why we face load shedding in some areas because our electricity production mainly relies on coal and gas. If there is shortage of coal, gas or oil the power plants will eventually shutdown leading to blackouts as we faced in early days of 2023.We also need to change our energy transmission system because its old and causes a lot of energy wastage during the transmission especially the sector of electricity.

The recent increase in energy prices has hinted us about the future where the markets may face instability if there is no smooth transition to low carbon energy resources like the wind power, solar power and hydro power. The policymakers need to pay attention to make this transition smooth otherwise disasters are waiting for us.

The only solution is that we need to shift to alternative and renewable energy sources as early as possible for that purpose we have to spend a significant amount in Research and development so that we can produce cost effective Solar panels and other devices of renewable energy resources. As a nation we need to take this issue serious and stop wasting the energy and our governments have to do the policy making and implementations in this regard otherwise there is something dark waiting for us in future.

— Zulqurnain Haider