Pakistan is a poor, deeply dysfunctional country, ranking 27th out of 179 nations on the Fragile States Index, which ranks countries on how likely they are to become a failed state.
So its government is very bad at ensuring that it citizens have access to electricity. There are three government-run power suppliers in Pakistan, and none does a great job.
But energy has become more abundant in Pakistan despite that fact, as citizens have taken things into their own hands, by generating their own electricity using solar panels.
Pakistan’s citizens imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in 2024 alone. CNN reports:
Pakistan, home to more than 240 million people, is experiencing one of the most rapid solar revolutions on the planet, even as it grapples with poverty and economic instability.
The country has become a huge new market for solar as super-cheap Chinese solar panels flood in. It imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in 2024, more than double the previous year, making it the world’s third-biggest importer, according to data from the climate think tank Ember.
Pakistan’s story is unique, said Mustafa Amjad, program director at Renewables First, an energy think tank based in Islamabad. Solar has been adopted at mass scale in countries including Vietnam and South Africa, ‘but none have had the speed and scale that Pakistan has had,’ he told CNN.
There’s one particular aspect fascinating experts: The solar boom is a grassroots revolution and almost none of it is in the form of big solar farms. ‘There is no policy push that is driving this; this is essentially people-led and market driven,’ Amjad said.
In many western countries, like Germany and Ireland, solar energy doesn’t produce reliable power, because skies are so often cloudy.
But Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi, is warm and sunny year round, with only 24 rainy days per year, and less than 14 inches of rain annually. Its 20 million people could get much more of their energy from solar power.
