Prime Minister Imran Khan yesterday said that by 2030, 60% of all energy produced in Pakistan will be “clean” and through renewable resources.
He also declared that 30% of all the country’s vehicles will use electricity.
Khan made the remarks at the Climate Ambition Summit 2020, a high-level virtual event, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement on climate change.
He began his address by stating that Pakistan contributes less than 1% to global emissions.
“Sadly, we are the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change. We have decided, firstly, that we will have nature-based solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change.This includes planting 10 billion trees in the next three years,” he said. 
Khan disclosed that Pakistan had increased the number of national parks and protected areas from 30 to 45.
“At the same time, we have decided we will not have power based on coal. We have already scrapped two coal power projects that were supposed to produce 2,600MW of energy, and replaced [them] with hydro-electricity.”
“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,” he pointed out.
He maintained that Pakistan will be doing its best to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Apart from Khan, who was the 7th speaker, co-conveners UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are scheduled to address the summit.
The conference is aimed at highlighting the fast-growing coalition of countries, cities, regions, businesses and investors, committing to net-zero emissions and boosting ambition in climate finance, and resilience and adaptation.
More than 110 countries have already committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
“The summit is a major step on the road to the next UN Climate Conference, COP26, which will be hosted by Britain next November in Glasgow,” read an official statement, adding that it will provide leaders with a global platform to showcase commitments to tackle climate change.
The summit will also be giving a platform to business, sub-national governments and civil society, including youth, indigenous and faith-based climate champions.
The Paris accord, adopted in 2015 and signed a year later, is designed to boost greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation worldwide. Its main goals include keeping the global average temperature to well below 2C (3.6F), and efforts to limit warming to 1.5C in a bid to reduce the impact and risks of climate change.
The last five years have been the warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organisation, a UN agency, with concern at rising numbers of wildfires, storms and flooding.
The UN has said the drop in emissions due to the global coronavirus pandemic is too small to halt the rising temperatures.
The United States, the world’s second-largest polluter after China, left the Paris Agreement under President Donald Trump who questioned the accepted science behind climate change.
Incoming US climate envoy John Kerry plans immediately to re-enter the accord and President-elect Joe Biden has set a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.