Any Londoner who is still nostalgic about smog (a grimy combination of smoke and fog) should visit Beijing today, New Delhi on a bad day, and Pakistan any day five years from now. In the 20th century, war-time gas masks had become symbols of personal self-defense.
Today, in the 21st century, they have been replaced by green surgical masks (a unisex equivalent of the Muslim nikab) as citizens everywhere battle for clean air and a pollution-pure environment.
No trauma in history -- not the world wars, famines, floods, unstoppable epidemics nor refugees have made human beings as aware of sharing the same planet as the impact of climate change. World leaders met in Paris recently to discuss this unnatural Armageddon. Heavy smokers (the US, China, and India) and passive inhalers alike demanded improvements at a global level and then returned home to resist them locally.
Pakistan, compared to these three countries, is still the new kid on the block in environmental degradation. Unlike others, it is yet to suffer the irreversible effect of using coal as a Promethean jump-start to industrialisation.
Almost every major country that has industrialised itself -- with the possible exception of Japan which relied on imported coal -- did so by exploiting indigenous coal deposits. Britain floats on coal, the United States has enough coal to last 250 years, Russia hoards over 173 billion tons of it, China (the largest producer and consumer of coal) obtains 74% of its energy from it, and India obtains over 60% of its electricity from coal from local mines.
Pakistan is said to sit on 175 billion tons of lignite, yet is short on energy. Like pre-1970 Bedouins, it squats on a treasure of hydrocarbons but lacks the technology to exploit it.
No wonder social optimists welcome the Chinese offer of support to meet our energy deficit with coal-fired plants. It would probably take a Wikileaks for the Pakistani public to learn details of these plants: What is their technology? How much will they cost? What will be the source of the raw material? What will be the production cost per unit? The transmission losses? And what should the consumer expect to pay every time he turns on a light or starts a tube-well?
From the information released slowly and grudgingly by the Planning Commission, prioritised CPEC projects include 2 x 660 MW coal-fired plants each at Port Qasim, Sahiwal, Muzaffargarh and Rahimyar Khan, one of 660 MW each at Thar Blocks I & Block II, and 1 x 300 MW plant at Gwadar. If they can be “harvested early” -- a Chinese euphemism for accelerated implementation – these plants should provide 7,560 MW of electricity to a public that hungers a year of Ramadans for energy.
This latest support from China is not the first time that it has provided coal-related aid to Pakistan. In the 1950s, when London was still shrouded with smog, China helped Pakistan, when India suddenly stopped coal supplies, by shipping first 125,000 tons then 300,000 tons of its coal on a monthly basis, in exchange for cotton.
That was half a century ago. While Pakistan and China are still seemingly inseparable “Iron brothers,” the reality is that euphoria and socio-economics make them uneasy siblings.
China needs to export coal-fired plants because its manufacturing capacity exceeds its domestic needs, even though China plans on installing 155 new coal-fired projects. Carbon dioxide emissions from these gas-exhaling dragons place China at the forefront of delinquent countries.
In 2011, China spewed over 8,000 million metric tons of CO2 into the air -- almost as much as the United States, Russia, and India combined. The Chinese plants destined for Pakistan are located substantially in fertile agricultural areas. Has anyone determined their ecological impact on the neighbourhood?
The plants need to be fed coal continuously. Until the mirage of Thar coal becomes a viable reality, this coal will have to be imported. Has Pakistan Railways the infrastructure necessary to transport such huge quantities of coal up the country, with empties on the way back?
Will the energy produced (at whatever cost) be transmitted efficiently? Or will it be subject to the deductions at source of NTDC’s transmission losses of around 3% and distribution losses of around 14 %?
Pakistan has undertaken to match China’s largesse with infrastructural support. Building highways, as Hitler discovered with his fretwork of autobahns, are useful show-pieces in a time of peace and indispensable arteries in a time of war. Infrastructure though means more than just silken highways.
It includes security. It is not unthinkable that the CPEC corridor may become a cable, with the Chinese at its copper core and the Pakistan armed forces as the outer wrapping.
Meanwhile, in Ralph Emerson’s words, “coal is the portable climate.” Coal and climate go together -- like iron brothers breathing the same air.
This article was previously published in Dawn.