ISLAMABAD
World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF-Pakistan) and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) signed a MoU to provide alternate means of energy to rural communities in cotton and rice producing areas of the country. The formal agreement was signed by Director General WWF-Pakistan Hammad Naqi Khan and Chief Executive/ Managing Director Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited Amjad Latif, in the presence of senior management from both sides at a ceremony held at SNGPL head office. The MoU forges a partnership of a year between the organisations, starting from July 2017 and ending in June 2019.
WWF-Pakistan with the financial support from SNGPL will implement the project titled Agro-waste community enterprise for provision of alternate energy for households and small-businesses (AWARE) which will provide clean-burning cooking stoves fuelled by agro-waste as an alternate means of energy to rural communities. The project will promote eco-friendly, alternate energy sources among rural households and small businesses through training, awareness raising and dissemination of 525 gasifier units using agro-waste as fuel.
Hammad Naqi Khan while welcoming the opportunity of teaming up with SNGPL said, “With this partnership we have an opportunity to promote renewable energy technologies, particularly harnessing the true potential of agro-waste in order to ensure that the rural and less privileged areas of the country keep pace with the growing energy demands in a sustainable manner.”
Speaking on the occasion, Amjad Latif said that, “We as an organisation are committed to the conservation and protection of the environment, to achieve this purpose we have worked with WWF-Pakistan in the past and will continue to work with the organization in future.”
Agricultural waste such as rice husk, cotton gin waste, and bagasse have the potential to generate energy, which otherwise becomes a problem for disposal. In the context of rural communities, which do not have access to energy, agro-wastes can be used as an energy source to reduce the dependence of households on fuel wood and meet their energy needs.
