Mitchell Beer - Energy Mix Guest Writer

Cleaning solar panels in Lahore, Pakistan. (Jamshaid Anwar/pexels)

Pakistan installed 27 gigawatts of distributed solar between 2023 and 2025, heralding a consumer-led energy revolution that exceeded the capacity of all the operating coal-, gas-, and oil-fired power plants the country has ever built and saved billions of dollars in fossil fuel imports, Islamabad-based Renewables First and UK energy think tank Ember conclude in a new report.

By more than tripling between 2023 and 2025, from 15 to 51 terawatt-hours, distributed solar transformed the way the country uses energy, the report states.

“Official statistics largely ignore distributed solar,” Ember said in a media notice this week. “This is the first time Pakistan’s energy statistics have been rebased” to reflect the country’s “transformative distributed solar boom,” and the results are stark: The increase in distributed solar was more than enough to absorb a 33-TWh increase in demand as the country posted 5.2% growth in economic activity, the report says.

Beyond the national grid, where distributed solar rose from 10 to 28% of total supply, Pakistan also shifted a share of its wider energy use from fuels to electricity. “While electricity demand surged by 21%, non-electricity energy use increased by just 2%,” the authors add. “As distributed solar supplied nearly all of this additional electricity demand growth, it is also meeting almost all the energy demand growth.”

“Distributed solar is providing millions of Pakistani homes, farms, and businesses with affordable, reliable electricity,” said lead author Nabiya Imran, Associate-Energy Insights at Renewables First. “Empowered by the widespread adoption of solar PV tech, consumers are playing a central role in Pakistan’s electrification and energy transition.”

“Pakistan has a thirst for energy, and solar is providing it,” added Ember Chief Analyst Dave Jones. “Distributed solar is so fast and cheap to build that it is actually driving up electricity demand” by replacing some of the fuels the country previously burned.

As a result, the share of Pakistan’s energy supplied by electricity rose five percentage points to 21.7% in just two years, just shy of the global average of 22%.

The rapid shift “has had effects far beyond the power sector. Rather than simply replacing grid electricity, distributed solar has enabled a surge in electricity consumption,” the report says. “By lowering costs and improving access to electricity, distributed solar is unlocking demand that high prices and unreliable supply had long constrained, thereby bringing benefits to Pakistani consumers.”

Renewables First and Ember maintain that no other electricity source could have delivered such a profound change in such a short time.

“Distributed solar was faster,” the authors say. “Distributed solar was cheaper,” at half the cost of grid electricity. And “distributed solar was better—it has eliminated daytime load shedding, avoided more than US$12 billion in oil and gas imports by February 2026, reduced CO2 and air pollution, and saved transmission and distribution losses.”

Mitchell is founding publisher and managing editor of The Energy Mix. He is rumoured to be a frighteningly fast writer, after working seven years as a journalist, 35-plus as a commercial writer, 45-plus as a sustainable energy and climate specialist, and now again as a journalist and editor. In October, 2019, he delivered a TEDx Ottawa talk on building wider public support for faster, deeper carbon cuts. He received the Clean50 Lifetime Achievement Award in October 2022.