Pakistan’s Renewables First has explored the implications of a lack of official data collection from the country’s distributed solar market segment, which is estimated to have reached over 24 GW of installed capacity by the middle of last year.
Pakistan’s energy transition is being mismeasured due to uncounted distributed solar deployments, in turn leading to continued dependency on fossil fuels, according to research from Islamabad-based think tank Renewables First.
The policy paper Electrons In, Hydrocarbons Out: Pakistan’s Quest for Economic and Resource Efficiency found that up to $120 billion in future fuel imports could be avoided over the lifetime of the 48 GW of solar modules Pakistan had imported as of June 2025.
The study’s co-author, Nabiya Imran, told pv magazine that with solar module imports into Pakistan now totaling 51.5 GW, around $180 billion in fossil fuel imports could be avoided. Imran added these solar imports could generate a total 1,730 TWh over their lifetime.
