Pakistan’s solar boom is helping it save billions during the ongoing energy crisis

Pakistan gets almost all its oil and gas from the Middle East, where U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran have caused crude prices to blow past $150 a barrel and tankers can’t get through the Strait of Hormuz. But it has one edge in the crisis: a rapid, recent shift to solar power. The country’s solar boom started in the wake of the Ukraine war, when Pakistan couldn’t afford to buy liquefied natural gas and that led to power outages. “It also led to soaring electricity bills,” says Rabia Babar, an energy market analyst at the Pakistan-based nonprofit Renewables First. Some power bills were as much as 30-40% of people’s income, sometimes more than they were spending on rent. At the same time, the price of solar panels had steeply fallen, with an oversupply from Chinese manufacturers that was easily accessible in Pakistan. And so people started buying and installing solar—often to avoid using grid power. Rooftops in Karachi, 2025. [Photo: Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images] “You could go to your l