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ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday has asserted that Pakistan Pakistan eyes 60 percent clean energy by 2030, in a bid to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The premier made the remarks while speaking at the Climate Ambition Summit 2020. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the summit was a high-level virtual event held on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement on climate change.
Addressing the summit, the Prime Minister said that thirty percent of all the country’s vehicles will run on electricity in the near future. “I assure you that Pakistan will be doing its best to make its contribution to mitigate the effects of climate change,” he added.
“Pakistan is the country whose contribution to global emission is less than 1 percent, yet and sadly, we are the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change,” PM Imran said.
Explaining what Pakistan had decided to do about climate change, PM Imran said, “We have decided, firstly, that we will have nature-based solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change.”
“This includes planting ten billion trees in the next three years,” he said, adding “Secondly, we have increased the number of national parks and protected areas from 30 to 45.”
The Prime Minister also said, “At the same time, we have decided that we will not have power based on coal. We have already scrapped two coal power projects that were supposed to produce 2,600MW energy.”
He added that as far as indigenous coal is concerned, the government has decided to produce energy either by “coal to liquid” or by “coal to gas” so that coal doesn’t have to be burned.
At the summit, it is expected that the countries will set out new ambitious commitments under three pillars of the Paris Agreement, namely mitigation, adaptation and finance.