By Imtiaz Gul & Engineer Arshad H Abbasi
The authors dissect Pakistan’s decade-long descent into energy dependency. Drawing on policy data and comparative analysis, the authors trace how the neglect of public-sector power plants, misplaced investment in imported fuels, and rent-seeking governance transformed a manageable shortfall into a structural crisis.
In 2013, Pakistan’s energy crisis reached its darkest point. Cities fell silent under endless load-shedding, factories stood shuttered, and families endured darkness for as long as 18 hours a day. This collapse was not the result of absent infrastructure but of something far more serious: public-sector power plants, once the backbone of national energy, corroded by neglect, starved of maintenance, and left to decay. A nation of two hundred million stood at a crossroads, and the path chosen sealed a decade of hardship.
One option was straightforward: rehabilitate the thermal plants inherited under the Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO). Though battered by decades of misuse, their structures remained sound. Feasibility studies laid out a rehabilitation program costing just USD 215–400 million. In return, Pakistan could have restored 1,200 MW, reduced fuel consumption, cut emissions, and bought precious time for structural reforms.
Instead, policymakers embraced imported fuels under the 2015 National Power Policy. LNG terminals rose on the coasts, coal plants in Sahiwal and Port Qasim began to burn foreign coal, and independent power producers (IPPs) signed contracts with binding take-or-pay clauses. The consequences were severe. Circular debt spiralled past Rs. 5 trillion. As a result, Pakistan’s tariffs ranked among the highest in South Asia. Ordinary households were forced to spend half their incomes on electricity. Industries shuttered, exports shrank, unemployment deepened, and every ribbon-cutting ceremony became less a promise of light than a symbol of financial strain.
Across the border, India faced the same dilemma of aging coal plants and rising demand. However, in 2017, its Central Electricity Authority (CEA) launched a Renovation and Modernization (R&M) programme that identified 148 units for life extension. By 2023, over 18,000 MW had been retrofitted, with efficiency gains of nearly 10 per cent.
Flexible operations allowed integration of solar and wind. Environmental retrofits such as flue gas desulfurization (FGD) and biomass co-firing reduced emissions while providing rural incomes. Rehabilitation was cheaper, faster, and cleaner than new construction. India preserved its inheritance. Pakistan neglected its own.
The contrast grew starker in July 2025, when Pakistan’s Power Division proudly announced the auction of 61 defunct thermal plants as scrap, earning Rs46.73 billion (USD 182 million). Officials framed it as modernization, but in truth, it was a loss of valuable infrastructure. India modernized 18,000 MW; Pakistan sold its assets for less than the cost of a single LNG cargo. Steel that once powered cities was reduced to rubble. Turbines that could have been restored were weighed and sold. It was a nation undermining its future while deepening its dependency on imports.
The toll has been more than financial. Families, crushed by bills, sank into despair so deep that suicides over electricity bills were reported. Farmers abandoned irrigation pumps because electricity devoured their earnings. Small shopkeepers shuttered businesses they had kept alive for decades. This was not accidental mismanagement. It was systemic failure—the foreseeable outcome of policies designed to extract rents for elites while imposing unbearable burdens on the powerless.
Yet, amid this despair, citizens carved their own path. By 2025, over a million homes were grid-connected, while 2.6 million rural homes relied entirely on off-grid solar. Farmers powered pumps, families cooled their homes, and shopkeepers lit their stalls through rooftop panels. In 2024 alone, Pakistan imported 17 GW of solar panels and 1.25 GWh of lithium-ion batteries—half the nation’s total installed capacity. By 2025, solar supplied a quarter of Pakistan’s electricity, a citizen-led revolution that eclipsed decades of state-led mega-projects.
The transformation has reshaped demand itself. In July 2025, peak daylight load fell by 2,000 MW compared to the previous year as citizens powered themselves. The “duck curve,” long a theoretical warning in energy reports, arrived in South Asia.
While the state stumbled, ordinary people rebuilt their country with determination and ingenuity. What governments and global lenders could not deliver, citizens achieved for themselves. This was more than energy—it was agency reclaimed, a collective response to circular debt, IMF conditionalities, and elite capture.
For scholars and policymakers, Pakistan’s case will endure as a study in failure. With USD 215 million, 1,200 MW could have been restored, yet USD 70 billion was drained into debt-heavy imports. Where India modernized, Pakistan dismantled capacity. Rehabilitation offered little space for elite rents; mega-projects overflowed with them. Scrapping plants destroyed institutional knowledge and technical memory. Mismanagement of the power sector became the single largest driver of external dependency, as confirmed in repeated IMF reports.
The verdict is clear. A state that could not light its homes instead weakened its economic sovereignty. Each dismantled turbine was a piece of independence forfeited. Each inflated bill, a burden on the poor. Each decision was not just a financial error but a governance failure.
Today, Pakistan’s own Prime Minister describes the power sector as a “global begging bowl.” The phrase captures both the depth of financial dependency and the erosion of institutional resilience. While India squeezed efficiency from its coal fleet, Pakistan sold its steel for scrap. While others built resilience, we accumulated debt. The cost is not only measured in rupees and megawatts but in lives disrupted, opportunities lost, and public trust eroded.
Yet, amid the ruins, the people—the forgotten majority of farmers, labourers, and families—have written their own chapter. Many of them illiterate, untrained in policy or science, nevertheless grasped what their rulers ignored: that the future lies in solar energy, in harmony with the climate, not in dependence on imported fuels. Their initiative cannot erase the grief, but it stands as a reminder of resilience and renewal.
For the world, this is a warning. For Pakistanis, it is a reckoning. And for the rulers who chose spectacle and debt over sustainability, it is a lesson in accountability. Power is not merely turbines and grids—it is sovereignty, survival, and the right to live with dignity. To sell it for scrap, while burdening generations, was not just mismanagement—it was a historic misjudgment.