Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Pakistan’s solar power switch continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In 2023, solar was the fifth largest source of electricity generation in the South Asian country of 240 million. Then Pakistani villagers and townspeople imported 17 gigawatts worth of solar panels in 2024, catapulting the country into one of the world’s top solar powers. By the summer of 2025, solar was the number one power source, generating 25% of the country’s electricity, nearly double the 14% the previous year. Only about 20 countries globally get a quarter or more of their power from solar. Australia is the other country where rooftop solar, as opposed to utility-grade solar, has led the way in the adoption of this technology.
For reference, China is one of Asia’s leading solar power producers, with this source accounting for about 13% of electricity generation. On a proportional basis, Pakistan now leads China in this regard. Of course, China is a much larger country and so it has many more gigawatts of installed solar capacity than Pakistan, in absolute numbers.
Officials of Pakistan’s ministry of climate change told Reuters that next year, solar power may occasionally generate more electricity in some markets, including Lahore in the northeast, than there is demand for. That is, the price of electricity would go negative. While this situation occurs in some advanced nations, Pakistan may be the first developing country where solar electricity production sometimes outruns demand.
The solarization of Pakistan is coming about because ordinary people are frustrated with the inability of the state utilities to provide electricity. Often consumers are without it up to 18 hours a day. For small businesses and manufacturers, this lack of power is ruinous, and so many small business owners have imported Chinese solar panels and installed them.
So many Pakistanis are running air conditioning off rooftop solar that energy demand has actually been falling. Pakistan is attempting to renegotiate a long-term Liquified Natural Gas contract with Qatar, because it now needs less fossil gas for air conditioning. Where such contracts are inflexible, the government risks losing money, paying for a product that consumers have decided they do not need. The government has responded by putting a 10% tax on imported solar panels and trying to make solar consumers pay for some of the costs of the old, dirty grid.
Pakistan now imports some 12% of all the solar panels China makes annually, having become one of Beijing’s biggest customers in this sector.
Photo of solar panels in Malakand, Swat, Pakistan by Green Voltaics Energy on Unsplash
Pakistan will soon be producing panels instead of importing all of them. China’s Hebei Juhang Energy is planning to create an enormous solar panel factory in Pakistan, where it will make panels for domestic use and for export. Pakistan has cheap labor that is relatively well educated and the country has lots of local mineral resources, so it is a plausible place for China to site some factories.
The United States, where President Trump is knee-capping the solar, wind and EV industries, is irrelevant to this development. It is an Asia-to-Asia exchange. The US has conceded to China global economic leadership in this field.
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