KUWAIT: Last week, Kuwait entered a phase of the programmed power cut; other phases preceded this phase during the same summer. This has been the case in the past consecutive decades. Such repeated crisis is neither the product of a financial deficit nor fuel shortage, which Kuwait has a surplus of both. Neither is there a shortage of solutions. It is rather the product of public administration incompetence.

One of the easiest planning aspects is to determine the growth rate of electricity consumption according to its historical path, and then to hedge by providing enough and slightly more than the maximum reserve in a country that is the hottest inhabited country on earth, especially during this summer. That kind of planning has not been achieved for decades. Even that solution is unsustainable because it addresses the suffocation problem only in the short term.

Sustainable treatment logically needs a system of pathways or alternatives that can reduce the volume and growth rates of consumption on the one hand, and raise the produced energy from non-conventional sources on the other. The solutions are known and practiced and have become history in most countries of the world, except in Kuwait. The first of these solutions is to divide the consumption levels into brackets and to start the tariff for the first segment, those with low incomes, from scratch, that is, for free.

That segment consumes only a very small percentage of the volume of total consumption, then grade up to the next four or five segments. The second solution is the programmed increase in electricity generation from alternative energy sources, whose cost has fallen significantly and is on the way to a higher decline. This will not only increase production capacity, but will also provide exportable oil or gas derivatives in support of public finance.

The third solution is a review of public policies such as horizontal housing expansion which is impossible to sustain, not only as a result of its impact on the rise in power consumption growth rates, but also as a result of the impossibility of providing infrastructure, money and land. Finally, it is imperative to have a decisive intervention in describing and organizing building methods and the used building materials, which will make power consumption reasonable and within its reasonable low levels. The above-proposed solutions do not contain anything new.

There are others, of course, and their access is no longer an option. Electricity generated in Kuwait has increased in ten years (2014 – 2023) from 65.1 TW to 88.3 TW. It may reach 120 TW in 2034 if the current policies continue without changing. Public administration’s failure is due to several reasons. One of these reasons to plan to avoid the crisis is the average rotation of ministers.

Future planning requires a stable, professional and non-politicized public administration that cares for the necessities of the people, while the power of planning and implementation is in the hands of a minister in a ministry headed by 14 ministers in the past ten years only two whom served twice, i.e. a minister every 260 days or about 8.5 months.

Based on the 2 above, we believe there is a need to abolish MEW and turn it into an independent body that rationalizes its expenditures and adopts strategies and policies to enable it to adopt the above solutions and ensure the stability and sustainability of energy supplies. It will gradually be able to finance itself, and perhaps achieve some profitability that alleviates the public financial crisis. - Al-Shall Report