Overcoming the Energy Efficiency gap in Pakistan’s Household Sector

Energy efficient household appliances ensure substantial financial savings while at the same time ensure better environmental quality. Despite these benefits, historically developing countries like Pakistan have not taken advantage from such opportunities and instead overwhelmingly concentrated on increased energy production. Likewise households are a major consumer of electricity and contribute, to a large extent, to the total electricity use of the nation. At present, the share of direct electricity use of households in Pakistan is about 42.15 % of the total. This paper identifies potential areas in the household sector of Pakistan where employing efficient technologies will result in substantial energy saving and hence financial saving to consumer and society as a whole. The study especially focuses on household electricity consumption patterns to identify the areas where there is room for achieving high efficiency goals. It also identifies the barriers that are preventing from achieving energy efficiency goals and appraise government’s policy to overcome such barriers.