The government of Pakistan has borrowed US$900mn from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the development of a power plant.

The Jamshoro project will consist of two new coal-fired power generation units being added to an additional thermal facility in the country’s Sindh region. It will add 1,200 MW of electricity to the national grid.

The project was approved in December by the ADB, but the loan was signed mid-February in Islamabad.

Pakistan has been investing heavily in its energy sector, with recent months seeing an influx of capital into hydropower projects. Despite being a coal-fired plant, the development at Jamshoro will make it more energy-efficient, says the ADB, by reducing its reliance on expensive HFO coal.

Recent history has seen Pakistan’s base-power plants fuelled by natural gas, but dwindling local supplies of the fuel has left the government looking for alternatives, with power shortages and load-shedding having a big effect on local industry.

In December 2013, the country announced it would “double-down” the construction of a gas pipeline with Iran, in spite of pressure from the US to look elsewhere for its energy requirements.