It is nice to see good news from time to time. I think the bigger question here is what role Chinese policy is playing in this story. Is their involvement strictly commercial? Have Chinese politicians decided on some sort of Marshall Plan-style approach to the Middle East?
The US has spent decades destabilising this region of the globe. I am hopeful that China and India will want peace and prosperity instead and we're hitting economic tipping points where they are going to start getting what they want whatever it is. The US isn't in a position to cause as much trouble now if the Chinese military thinks their western flank needs to start calming down.
Taking on the US x Saudis via a state that the Western audience traditionally considers terrorists, scammers and hackers via a soon to be eco-friendly Proxy is quite clever ...
Off-topic, but the image captioned "Including workers in traditional dress handling solar infrastructure" looks AI generated. The workers on the extreme left and right are standing on solar panels, and the one in the centre is holding some metal bars that merge Escher-like with the panels behind him.
Even the caption sounds like part of an AI prompt to generate the image.
The caption for it is "ChatGPT generated panoramic Photo of a Pakistani factory rooftop covered in solar panels Including workers in traditional dress handling solar infrastructure"
We setup a solar on in our home in Pakistan back in 2023. Our primary driver was cost since it was getting extremely expensive during summers when the ACs were on. We expected to get the return in 4 years but inflation went so high in subsequent years that it took just 2 years.
The author of this article appears to be unaware that very high electricity prices have been the other key driver behind Pakistan’s solar boom along with the massive reduction in the cost of solar panels.
This is just China export data, based on the assumptions that: the country importing is actually installing this, and that .cn is 80% of the market, so it is a good proxy.
I think the main point of this article is that none of this is happening in a centralized, coordinated fashion. This is mainly folks slapping solar on any building with a roof, with the government helping out a bit on the regulatory side.
It does eventually need to be coordinated to avoid grid issues, but given the massive increase in battery manufacturing (and cost decreases) battery deployment is likely to happen at a lightning pace over the next 3-4 years.
The article seems unrealistically favourable to Pakistan's government eg:
>Pakistan’s energy transformation didn’t happen in a vacuum—it’s part of a broader pivot toward climate consciousness that has taken root in both policy and politics...
whereas in reality solar's taken off because the government is incompetent at providing electricity so people get their own panels. From wikipedia:
>Following 2022 dearth of imported LNG in Pakistan, the country indicated it would quadruple its coal power plants, which use domestic coal
Doesn't sound very "pivot toward climate consciousness" to me.
Generation and storage definitely should go hand in hand, but I think the Pakistani authorities' desire is simply to have something better than the alternative of not having it. At least Pakistan has plenty of hydropower installations that could potentially be adapted to act as energy storage.
The main reason for this is the exhorbitant cost of Energy in the country - apart from the constant 6-8 hrs powercut even in the urban centers.
I have seen videos where a layman, who earns around 20-30k a month is slapped with a 32k electricity bill. I am not sure if a layman with means of this level is adopting Solar, but surely anyone else with the money to afford it will. Mostly because it makes economic sense.
That would make a majority of the solar farms built and operated by chinese companies? And wouldn't that essentially make CCP in charge of a considerable part of Pakistans energy sector?
Readit News
The US has spent decades destabilising this region of the globe. I am hopeful that China and India will want peace and prosperity instead and we're hitting economic tipping points where they are going to start getting what they want whatever it is. The US isn't in a position to cause as much trouble now if the Chinese military thinks their western flank needs to start calming down.
There's little government policy behind it. It's basically:
Chinese companies invest in massive production of solar panels and drive prices down to unprecedented levels.
Pakistani individuals and businesses, facing energy shortages and very expensive grid power, decide to invest in solar panels to get cheap energy.
> Have Chinese politicians decided on some sort of Marshall Plan-style approach to the Middle East?
Not even close, and there's no reason for them to do this.
Belt and road? Investing in ports? Infra build support for owned to CN? This literally just happened over the last decade, that’s plenty reason.
Even the caption sounds like part of an AI prompt to generate the image.
Sounds more like op-ed piece than actual facts.
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This was covered recently in a great interview with two Pakistani renewable energy experts on the Volts podcast: https://www.volts.wtf/p/pakistans-solar-boom
https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore... has charts for countries (and regions) that go to middle of 2024.
https://ember-energy.org/data/china-solar-exports-data/ has the raw data, which shows 2194.236922MW of installation in pakistan in _just Jan 2025_.
This is just China export data, based on the assumptions that: the country importing is actually installing this, and that .cn is 80% of the market, so it is a good proxy.
Good job to whoever is importing this!
That should go in parallel if they don’t want experience grid faults.
It does eventually need to be coordinated to avoid grid issues, but given the massive increase in battery manufacturing (and cost decreases) battery deployment is likely to happen at a lightning pace over the next 3-4 years.
>Pakistan’s energy transformation didn’t happen in a vacuum—it’s part of a broader pivot toward climate consciousness that has taken root in both policy and politics...
whereas in reality solar's taken off because the government is incompetent at providing electricity so people get their own panels. From wikipedia:
>Following 2022 dearth of imported LNG in Pakistan, the country indicated it would quadruple its coal power plants, which use domestic coal
Doesn't sound very "pivot toward climate consciousness" to me.
I have seen videos where a layman, who earns around 20-30k a month is slapped with a 32k electricity bill. I am not sure if a layman with means of this level is adopting Solar, but surely anyone else with the money to afford it will. Mostly because it makes economic sense.