How a grassroots movement in Pakistan pulled off one of the fastest solar revolutions in the world

(CNN) — Glimmering, deep-blue solar panels carpet rooftops in Pakistan’s largest cities and dot the perimeters of houses in villages across the country.

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.

Pakistan’s solar story is not a straightforward good news story; it’s complex and messy with potential trouble ahead as the energy landscape changes radically and rapidly. But many analysts say what’s happening here undermines an increasingly popular narrative that clean energy is unaffordable, unwanted and can only succeed with large-scale government subsidies.

“Contrary to the notion that renewables only thrive on subsidies or are ‘forced’ onto the Global South, Pakistanis are actively choosing solar because it makes financial sense,” said Harjeet Singh, climate advocate and founding director of Satat Sampada Climate Foundation.

As the country grapples with severe and deadly heat waves — temperatures nudged toward 122 degrees Fahrenheit in April — there is also hope access to solar can help people afford the cooling systems on which they increasingly rely to survive.

A ‘bottom-up’ revolution

Pakistan’s solar boom is due to a “perfect storm” of factors, said Waqas Moosa, chair of the Pakistan Solar Association and the CEO of Hadron Solar.

Chief among those are the tumbling cost of solar panels from China coupled with sky-high electricity prices.

Pakistan’s electricity woes can be traced back to the 1990s when it entered into expensive power agreements, many tied to the US dollar, where producers were paid regardless of whether they produced electricity, said Asha Amirali, a research associate at the Centre for Development Studies at the University of Bath.

The sharp depreciation of the Pakistani rupee combined with falling electricity demand — in part due to the rise in solar — have pushed electricity prices upward. Russia’s war in Ukraine added an extra layer of pressure as gas prices increased.

Electricity costs have shot up 155% over the last three years, Amjad, from Renewables First, said. In addition, grid electricity is unreliable with multi-hour blackouts common in parts of the country.

Businesses and households able to afford it have turned to cheap solar.

While precise data on the amount of solar installed is sparse, analysts estimate around 15 gigawatts was installed last year compared to peak electricity demand in the country of about 30 gigawatts, said Dave Jones, Ember’s global insights program director. The scale is “just mind boggling,” he told CNN.

A Google Earth search of big cities such as Islamabad, Karachi or Lahore reveals the sheer amount of solar, said Jenny Chase, a solar analyst with BloombergNEF. “There are more solar panels than you’ll see almost anywhere else in the world in terms of roof coverage,” she told CNN.

An official from Pakistan’s Power Division told CNN the government “has to be given full credit” for this boom, citing programs including zero tax on solar panels and a net metering system, which allows people to send excess solar energy to the grid and currently accounts for about 4 gigawatts .

But many analysts disagree, pointing to the absence of largescale government solar spending. The solar boom “has been very bottom up,” Amjad said. “It was essentially the people forcing markets to import more solar panels.”

It’s changing the way Pakistanis think about electricity.

Moosa, from the Pakistan Solar Association, compares it to the rise of social media. In the same way sites like TikTok and Instagram have allowed people to bypass traditional media and become publishers, the solar revolution is allowing Pakistanis to become electricity producers as well as consumers.

Once you combine solar and batteries, “suddenly all the power goes in the hands of consumers,” Moosa said.

… But

This revolution is not all upside.

“Our grid is going to suffer,” Moosa said. There are concerns it will enter a “death spiral,” where expensive electricity pushes people away from the grid and toward solar, reducing the revenue utilities get, leaving those still on the grid facing higher prices, which in turn pushes more people to solar.

The Pakistan Power Division official said the government may take “appropriate but necessary measures” to ensure the stability of the grid but did not specify what these might be.

The solar boom is also driving a further wedge between Pakistan’s rich and poor, Amirali said. Solar is only available to those with deep enough pockets and “everybody else is still stuck on the extremely expensive, often extremely unreliable, dirty fossil fuel-based grid,” the researcher said. “I think Pakistan can only teach you what not to do right now.”

Others take a more positive view. While there are people being left behind, solar is not limited to the rich, Amjad said.

People are using simple solar systems in areas that maybe get only a handful of hours of grid electricity a day, he said. Think the village tire shop bringing out a single solar panel every morning, or the families that group to convert their diesel-powered irrigation wells to solar.

“This is what cheap solar means,” BloombergNEF’s Chase told CNN. “It means people who have never had power before, having power.”

Pakistan’s solar boom may be imperfect but some analysts say it holds broader lessons, especially for countries where grid electricity is expensive, unreliable or both.

There are two crucial takeaways, said climate advocate Singh. Falling costs mean renewables are often “the most rational economic path away from fossil fuels” but Pakistan also underscores the “absolute necessity of proactive planning and timely investment” to ensure the grid can cope, he said.

Chase believes many countries may experience similar solar booms but warned the solar market is unpredictable.

South Africa, for example, saw a rapid uptake of solar in 2023 when electricity supply was increasingly erratic and blackouts common. It looked like the start of a solar boom to some analysts, but take-up dropped when the government invested money in making the grid more robust.

For now, Pakistan has become “a poster child for energy transition in the developing South,” Amjad said. People are watching and the stakes are high.

If the goes revolution wrong, it will affect the way solar is seen globally, he added. The country must ensure its solar story “becomes a fairy tale and not one that is talked about as an example of things not to do.”

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