From Jasmin Smajic
China's exports for the solar, EV, and battery industries reached a record high of $21.9 billion in March 2026, up 70% year-on-year.
Trump's stupid attack on Iran has accelerated the shift to green tech. And I suspect this is only the beginning.
From Renew Economy
Record amounts of new solar and wind generation capacity met 99 per cent of global electricity demand growth in 2025, new data shows, as the rise and rise of big batteries helps transform solar into a “round-the-clock resource” – with Australia leading the charge.
According to the Global Electricity Review 2026 from energy think tank Ember, renewable power generation increased by 887 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025, outpacing electricity demand growth of 849 TWh for the year.
Solar – as noted above – was the big star of the year, with new PV generation meeting 75 per cent of the net increase in global power demand, growing by a record 636 TWh in 2025 to reach 2,778 TWh in 2025, a 30 per cent jump on 2024.
The increase in global solar
capacity[output] was 18 times as large as that of gas (+36 TWh), which was the only fossil power source that grew in 2025, Ember says.A separate report, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global Energy Review says the global solar juggernaut contributed the largest structural increase ever recorded in a single year for any electricity generation technology in 2025, and helped renewables outpace coal growth for the first time.
In the context of the current Middle East conflict, Ember notes that the solar generation added in 2025 would be sufficient to displace gas-fired electricity equivalent to all LNG exports through the Strait of Hormuz in the same year, estimated at 550 TWh.
Global solar generating
capacity[output] has been doubling roughly every three years, Ember says, rising from 1,333 TWh in 2022 and overtaking wind power for the first time globally in 2025. Both solar and wind are expected to overtake nuclear in 2026.Wind energy, too, had a bumper year according to a separate Ember report, which shows that the global industry installed a record-smashing 165 gigawatts (GW) – or 205 TWh – in 2025, marking the highest ever level of new installations for the wind power industry.
Australia followed the global wind trend, charting 43 per cent year-on-year growth with 1,200 new wind projects coming online in 2025, compared to 835 in 2024 – bringing the total number of wind projects by the end of 2025 to 13,515.
“Australia recorded a significant increase in wind generation … due to stronger wind conditions and major new wind farms coming online, such as the 412 MW Goyder South wind farm and the 923 MW MacIntyre Wind Farm, Australia’s largest-ever wind farm project,” the report says.
But Ember notes that fewer projects achieving final investment decision and approval for the coming years, due to planning delays, inflation and community opposition, points to a drop in the future pipeline.
In combination, wind and solar now contribute more than half of all global renewable generation and, combined with nuclear (8.9%) and hydro, low-carbon sources reached 42.6 per cent of total electricity generation in 2025, up 9.1 percentage points from 33.5% in 2015.
On the other side of the coin, the share of fossil generation fell to 57.4 per cent, down from 66.5 per cent in 2015. This was the first year since 2020 without an increase in electricity generation from fossil fuels and only the fifth year without a rise this century.
For storage, 2025 was also a landmark year, in which battery economics reached a turning point, with battery pack prices for stationary storage falling to a record low of $US70/kWh – down 45 per cent on 2024 – allowing dispatchable solar with batteries to be delivered for around $76/MWh.
“This makes it cheaper and faster to build than a new gas power plant, particularly in countries reliant on expensive LNG imports,” the report says.
Globally, battery storage capacity additions jumped by 46 per cent from 2024 to an estimated 247 GWh, according to Ember – enough to shift around 14 per cent of global solar generation from daytime to other hours.
According to the IEA, battery storage was the fastest-growing power sector technology in 2025, with the roughly 110 GW of new capacity added over the course of the year beating the largest-ever annual capacity additions for natural gas.
“Battery storage is the fastest growing power technology today,” the IEA says.
“Installed capacity is now eleven times higher than in 2021. Lithium‑iron phosphate (LFP) batteries now account for around 90% of deployments; while less energy‑dense than rival chemistries commonly used in EVs, LFP batteries are typically cheaper and better suited to more frequent cycling. Just five years ago, the market share of LFP batteries in deployments was well below 50%.”
Ember marks 2025 as the year that batteries are “finally moving into the mainstream” to help shift solar power beyond daylight hours and unlock the next phase of solar expansion.
“Batteries have outgrown their initial niche role as a grid stability service and are now core infrastructure designed to store excess daytime electricity and release it in the evening and at night,” the Ember report says.
In this regard, Ember says Australia is leading the world, as one of two countries alongside Chile that could shift more than 50% of the new solar capacity added in 2025 with new battery capacity, transforming PV generation from a daytime solution to “a nearly round-the-clock resource” and the most affordable pathway to meet rapidly rising electricity demand.
“Australia and Chile stand out for adding relatively small amounts of battery capacity in absolute terms, 9 GWh and 4 GWh respectively, but large enough relative to their solar growth to make a material difference,” the report says.
“Australia shows how batteries can quickly reshape power markets once deployed at scale. In Q4-2025, during the high-value evening peak hours (18:00-20:00) in the National Electricity Market, batteries set prices 36% of the time – doubling from 18% in Q4-2024, displacing gas and hydro as price setters.
 |
| So much for renewables leading to higher prices! |
“This led to significantly lower price volatility compared with Q4-2024, with average spot prices of around $100 per MWh during 18:00-20:00, less than half of the Q4-2024 average spot prices during these hours. This helped bring overall prices lower, with wholesale prices averaging $50/MWh, a $39/MWh (-44%) reduction from Q4 2024.
These dynamics, says Ember, show batteries are already delivering tangible system benefits by reducing reliance on expensive fossil generation and stabilising prices at the most critical times of day.
“We have firmly entered the era of clean growth,” says Ember managing director Aditya Lolla.
“Clean energy is rapidly redefining the foundation of energy security in a volatile world. It is already helping countries reduce exposure to fossil fuel imports and costs while meeting rising electricity demand.”
It's clear that emissions from electricity (~30% of total emissions) have peaked. It's now obvious to everybody, except those who get paid not to see the truth, that reliance on oil and gas is an economic and a strategic risk. EV sales have risen 50%, as consumers have seen the light, but it must also be self-evident to all in government that it would be far less risky to permanently uncouple economies from oil. So it is likely that emissions from land transport (~18% of emissions) will peak soon, as EV sales explode. And governments will force their electricity producers to install more solar and batteries and less gas, to reduce reliance on LNG shipped through the straits of Hormuz.
Also, the oil crisis will most likely lead to a recession, because of a combination of physical constraints on output (for example, Europe has just 6 weeks of aviation fuel left), on confidence (consumer and business) and on incomes (a jump in inflation.) I lived through the 1973 and 1979 oil crises, both of which led to deep recessions and surging inflation, and this crisis is bigger than those two. In fact, the oil supply shock is bigger than those two combined. And the consequent fall in oil demand will only be partially replaced as economies recover.
Emissions have peaked. Unambiguously good news.
From Electrek
Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember. The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won’t increase. [Recall that the Covid Crash led to a deep, though short-lived, recession. 2025 is not a recession year, though 2026 may be]
Solar and wind aren’t just expanding; they’re outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%).
That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity – solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal – to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%.
For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.
China and India are partly driving that shift. In China, fossil generation fell 52 TWh (-1.1%) as clean energy met all new demand, resulting from a structural change in its power system. India saw fossil generation drop 34 TWh (-3.3%), thanks to record solar and wind growth and milder weather.
Solar is doing the heavy lifting. It’s now the single biggest driver of change in the global power sector, with growth more than three times larger than any other electricity source in the first three quarters of the year.
“Record solar power growth and stagnating fossil fuels in 2025 show how clean power has become the driving force in the power sector,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember. “Historically a growth segment, fossil power now appears to be entering a period of stagnation and managed decline. China, the largest source of fossil growth, has turned a corner, signaling that reliance on fossil fuels to meet growing power demand is no longer required.”
Electricity demand rose 2.7% in the first three quarters of 2025, far slower than the 4.9% jump seen last year when extreme heatwaves pushed up cooling demand in China, India, and the US. This year’s milder weather helped take some pressure off the grid, making it easier for clean energy to close the gap.
For the first time outside of major crises such as the pandemic or the global financial crash, clean energy growth has not only kept up with demand but surpassed it. The next big question: can solar, wind, and the rest of the clean power sector keep up this pace consistently? If they can, 2025 may be remembered as the year global fossil generation
plateaued. [peaked]
I talked about EMBER's report for the first 6 months of 2025, here. The conclusions are pretty much the same. Renewables are beating fossil fuels, partly because of slower demand growth because of cooler summers, as well as because of massive growth in wind and solar. So it is possible that in 2026, hot summers and higher economic growth will increase demand again, by more than the rise in electricity generated by renewables. But it is unlikely, and if it does happen, renewables will overtake demand again in 2027. Emissions have probably peaked. Even if their decline will be slow, at first.
From EMBER
Global solar installations are on track for another record year. In the first six months of 2025, the world added 380 GW of new solar capacity — 64% higher than during the same period in 2024, when 232 GW were installed. In 2024, it took until September for global solar capacity additions to surpass 350 GW, while in 2025, the milestone was reached in June.
 |
| Visit the original of this chart, here, to see the interactive version |
The rapid expansion of solar capacity in recent years has made it the fastest growing source of new electricity generation. In 2024, global solar output rose by 28% (+469 TWh) compared to 2023, more than any other source.China remains the global leader of this surge. In the first half of 2025, its installations more than doubled compared with the same period last year. As a result, China added more than twice as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, making up 67% of the global total. In the first half of 2024, China made up 54% of global solar installations.
This growth was spurred in part by developers racing to complete projects before new rules on wind and solar compensation came into effect in June this year. While this may lead to a slowdown in the second half of the year, new clean power procurement requirements for industry and higher full-year deployment expectations from China’s solar PV association (CPIA) suggest that 2025 will surpass 2024’s record high installations.
Outside China, all other countries together installed an estimated 124 GW in the first half of 2025 — 15% higher than the first half of 2024. India recorded the second highest installations with 24 GW, a 49% increase over the already strong 16 GW added in deployment in H1-2024. The United States ranked third with 21 GW, up 4% year-on-year, despite recent moves by the US government to restrict clean power deployment. Deployment dipped slightly in Germany and Brazil. The remaining countries added 65 GW in H1-2025, 22% more than in H1-2024.
Growth in Africa is also beginning to take off, as the amount of solar panels it imported from China rose 60% in the last 12 months, as Ember reported. However, lack of access to official installation data still obscures the actual pace of solar deployment on the continent.
With deployment surging across key markets and China’s rapid scale-up pushing global installations to new highs, 2025 is on track to become another historic year for solar power. The numbers highlight not only solar’s momentum, but also its pivotal role in reshaping the global energy system.
In 2024, solar provided 6.9% of the world's electricity. In 2014, it was 0.8%. The growth rate in the absolute output of solar over the last 10 years has averaged 32% per annum.
Over the last year, solar output grew 28%. Electricity demand, since 2019, has increased by 2.8% per annum. If solar output continues to grow this fast --- and we are in the midst of an S-curve inflexion point --- and electricity demand growth remains at 2.8% per annum, by 2027, the rise in the supply of electricity from solar alone will exceed the total growth of electricity demand. Just from solar. Ignore increases from wind and nuclear.
Of course, one can construct different scenarios. Solar growth could slow. And demand growth could accelerate, because of the rollout of EVs and AI data centres. I'm comfortable with the growth in solar supply: solar panels are cheap, battery storage in cheap, and both are getting cheaper. The world is switching to solar plus storage because it makes economic sense to do so, and will make more sense every year that passes. Only the USA (unfortunately) is immune to this logic. Because battery costs are falling so fast, it's entirely possible output from solar will accelerate, because previous limitations on the percentage of solar in the grid, imposed by the lack of storage, fall away.
Demand, however, will probably accelerate, because of EVs, and maybe AI data centres. If demand growth accelerates by 50%, to 4.2% per annum, the crossover point will come in 2029. And every year after that, solar supply will continue to rise by larger and larger amounts in absolute terms, reducing coal faster and faster.
This doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. For global temperatures to stop rising, total emissions have to fall to close to zero. The growth in solar will only reduce emissions from electricity generation, which is ~30% of total electricity supply. And, even with the very rapid growth in EVs, it will take a decade at least for the car fleet to transition after EVs reach 100% of sales. But it's a giant beginning. Rich countries have reduced emissions because we felt it right to do so, despite the cost. But the rest of the world couldn't afford to do that. Now it can, and the magic of the S-curve means that this shift can only accelerate.
From The Energy Mix
 |
| The hrowth rate hasn't just been 60% per annum for the last year. It's average 60% per annum since June 2021. |
China’s export data suggest that Africa could soon see a spike in solar energy generation, with record imports of photovoltaic panels driving a 60% overall import increase across the continent.“South Africa and Egypt are currently the only countries with installed solar capacity measured in gigawatts, rather than megawatts,” writes global energy think tank EMBER, in a new report.
“That could be about to change.”
EMBER tracked Chinese customs data for solar panels being exported to African countries. The data showed that exports could support record growth rates for 20 countries across the continent from June 2024 to June 2025. The rate for Algeria was stunning, with incoming solar gear increasing 33-fold during that time. Zambia, Botswana, and Sudan rose eightfold, sevenfold, and sixfold, respectively, while Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Benin, Angola, and Ethiopia all more than tripled.
Overall, Chinese exports to Africa rose 60% to deliver a potential capacity of 15,032 megawatts (MW). Solar panel imports across the continent—excluding South Africa—have now tripled over the past two years from 3,734 MW to 11,248 MW.
“These solar panels will provide a lot of electricity,” says EMBER. “The solar panels imported into Sierra Leone in the last 12 months, if installed, would generate electricity equivalent to 61% of the total reported 2023 electricity generation, significantly adding to electricity supply.”
The year’s imports to Chad could similarly generate 49% of that country’s total energy generation in 2023. Solar’s share of energy generation could increase by 10% in Liberia, Somalia, Eritrea, Togo, and Benin, and 5% in 16 other countries.
EMBER says these percentages may be inflated because total electricity generation is often underestimated in sub-Saharan Africa, and the think tank’s Electricity Data Explorer does not include non-grid generation sources like the diesel generators that are widely used in many of these countries.
The destinations for China’s increasing exports across Africa have changed since the continent’s last surge of solar imports in 2023, which was largely driven by South Africa. The rise in solar capacity could replace diesel generation, which in turn might reduce oil imports for many countries. EMBER estimates that a solar panel will pay itself off in savings from reduced oil spending within months.
For example, a 420-watt solar panel that sells for around US$60 in Nigeria would produce 550 kilowatt/hours (kWh) in a year at a cost of 14 cents/kWh. Compare that to spending $60 for diesel, at a price of 66 cents per litre (at the time of EMBER’s analysis), an expense that would yield only 275 kWh of electricity, “implying a payback time of just six months” for the solar panel.
“Even with the recent diesel price rises in Nigeria, diesel is twice as expensive in many other African countries, meaning an even shorter payback [in other African countries].”
A limitation in the analysis is that it’s based on Chinese customs data for solar panels exported to Africa, EMBER writes. Exports may not stay in the African country they are exported to if they are then reshipped to another country, perhaps to dodge tariffs. Even when panels stay in that country, their installation timeline is far from certain without clear data from the importing country. That information was often unavailable for the countries in the study.
However, similar exports to Pakistan were mostly installed and led to a recent surge in solar capacity in that country. With many similar drivers for solar uptake in the two regions, EMBER suggests Africa can look forward to similar results.
(Read EMBER's report here)
The decline in solar panel costs has reached the point where even poor countries want it. Solar is rising exponentially in Africa. If you have diesel off-grid or substitute generators, solar fits in easily. You only need to run the generators at night, instead of all the time. Storage costs are falling faster than solar panel costs. In a couple of years, Africa, and other developing areas, will be installing storage as well as solar.
China isn't just greening its own economy. It's greening the world's.
From Electrek
A new report from global energy think tank Ember says batteries have officially hit the price point that lets solar power deliver affordable electricity almost every hour of the year in the sunniest parts of the world.
The study looked at hourly solar data from 12 cities and found that in sun-soaked places like Las Vegas, you could pair 6 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels with 17 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of batteries and get a steady 1 GW of power nearly 24/7. [At 1 GW per hour, the battery has 17 hours of storage. This seems a lot!] The cost? Just $104 per megawatt-hour (MWh) based on average global prices for solar and batteries in 2024. That’s a 22% drop in a year and cheaper than new coal ($118/MWh) and nuclear ($182/MWh) in many regions.
Ember calls it “24/365 solar generation,” and it’s not just a theoretical model. Cities like Muscat, Oman, and Las Vegas can hit that steady power mark for up to 99% of the hours in a year. Hyderabad, Madrid, and Buenos Aires can reach 80–95% of the way there using that same solar-plus-storage setup with some cloud cover. And even cloudier cities like Birmingham in the UK can cover about 62% of hours annually.[Manchester is famouly cloudy and wet--latitude 53 degrees north. Berlin is also 53 degrees north. New York is only 40 degrees N. If you also have wind in your grid, you should be able to go to 100% renewables up to latitude 53.]
“This is a turning point in the clean energy transition,” said Kostantsa Rangelova, global electricity analyst at Ember. “Around-the-clock solar is no longer a distant dream; it’s an economic reality of the world. It unlocks game-changing opportunities for energy-hungry industries like data centres and manufacturing.”
This is an enormous opportunity for sunny regions in Africa and Latin America. Manufacturers and data centers could also tap into solar-plus-storage and skip long waits (and big bills) for new grid connections.
It’s not a silver bullet for grid-wide reliability, but it lets solar carry much more of the load, especially where sunshine is abundant. Batteries also help avoid costly grid expansions by allowing up to five times more solar to plug into existing connections [provided they are co-located with the solar farm].
In 2024 alone, global battery prices dropped 40%, which helped drive down solar-plus-storage costs by 22%. Record-low tenders from countries like Saudi Arabia point to even cheaper options coming soon.
Real-world projects are already online: The UAE built the world’s first gigawatt-scale 24-hour solar facility. Arizona is already home to solar-powered data centers. And as battery tech keeps improving, round-the-clock solar could become the backbone of clean energy systems in the world’s sunniest places [and even in their less sunny places].
From Jan Rosenow
An historic milestone: For the first time, solar power generated more electricity globally than nuclear, making it the world’s 4th largest power source.
In just 5 years, solar output nearly tripled—from 79 TWh (Apr 2020) to 233 TWh (Apr 2025). The energy transition is speeding up.
From EMBER
My comments:
From Nicholas Fulghum
Wind and solar generated more than a QUARTER of China's electricity for the first month on record In April 2025, 26% of China's electricity generation was produced by wind and solar according to our latest data. Wind: 13.6% Solar 12.4%As the EMBER piece says:
The April record was driven by both wind and solar hitting individual record high shares. Wind power accounted for 13.6% of generation while solar contributed 12.4%. The rise of solar power in particular has been remarkable. The share of solar power has tripled in the last five years, from just 4.1% in April of 2020. In 2024, China installed more new solar capacity than the rest of the world combined, more than tripling its rate of installations in just two years, from around 103 GW (DC) in 2022 to 333 GW in 2024. Installations have continued at pace in 2025, with 72 GW of new solar added in Q1 alone, up 18% from Q1 2024, according to Ember’s monthly wind and solar capacity data.
The rapid build out of solar capacity in China has pushed not only the share, but also absolute solar generation to new heights. In April 2025, China hit a new record of 96 TWh of solar generation, surpassing the previous record of 89 TWh set in August of 2024. This record may soon be surpassed again as summer conditions further boost output.
The growth in renewables is also reshaping the overall generation mix. Fossil fuel generation has already declined by 72 TWh—or 3.6%—year-on-year across the first four months of 2025, a shift that’s beginning to show structural signs.
The rate at which wind and solar are increasing means the rise in output from renewables now exceeds the rise in total demand (current running at +-3% per annum), even with electricity demand increasing because of EVs and PHEVs. Which means, in turn, that China's emissions have peaked.
Caveats: growth may soar this year or next, or, for some inexplicable reason, wind and solar will stop growing. Solar panels continue to decline in cost, and battery costs are falling even faster, meaning solar can be "firmed" easily and cheaply, so solar, at least, is likely to continue growing fast.
Note how wind and solar have different seasonal patterns, which means that, combined, less of both is required. For now, gas will still be required to balance the grid when renewables are low, but the rise in EVs/PHEVs and falling capacity utilisation at coal power stations, means that China has passed peak coal and peak oil. Since China produces +-25% of the world's emissions, that may mean that world emissions have also peaked.
From Lauren Orso (who works at EMBER)
Charting solar power's explosive global growth! From 2019 to 2024, countries have moved right (higher share, %) and up (more solar power, TWh), with the boom spanning small to large power markets.
[Why don't the lines all have a 45 degree slope? Because some countries are at high latitudes]
From John Hanger
Good morning with good news: US wind & solar surge, generating 83 TWh in March 2025, up ~20% from 69 TWh in March 2024.
W&S were 24.38% of US electricity in March 2025 March W&S generation: 2025 83 TWh 2024 69 TWh 2021 52 TWh 2020 39 TWh 2015 18 TWh 4X since 2015 & 2X since 2020!
Pakistan isn’t the first country you’d expect to crash the global solar party. But by the end of 2024, it quietly rocketed into the top tier of solar adopters, importing a jaw-dropping 22 gigawatts worth of solar panels in a single year. That’s not a typo or a spreadsheet rounding error. That’s the kind of number that turns heads at IEA meetings and makes policy analysts double-check their databases. It certainly made me sit up and take notice when I first heard about what was happening in mid-2024.
It’s more solar than Canada has installed in total. It’s more than the UK added in the past five years. And yet it didn’t make a blip in most Western media. While the U.S. continued its decade-long existential crisis about grid interconnection queues and Europe squabbled over permitting reforms, Pakistan skipped the drama and just bought the panels.
To understand how improbable this cleantech surge really is, you have to go back to the beginning. Pakistan was born in blood and migration—wrenched from British India in 1947 in a Partition that triggered one of the largest and most violent population exchanges in history. Millions of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs fled across hastily drawn borders, and up to two million people didn’t survive the chaos. The new nation was split in two—West Pakistan and East Pakistan—separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory and political dysfunction. That arrangement collapsed in 1971 when East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh after a brutal civil war and military crackdown that left deep scars.
Then came the Cold War. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan became the launchpad for American-backed Mujahideen fighters. Guns, dollars, and militants flowed through the border for a decade, and when the Americans packed up in the early ’90s, the extremists didn’t. The U.S. came back in 2001 with another invasion, and again, Pakistan was drawn into the fire as a frontline state. For over 30 years, it was a nation perpetually reacting to someone else’s war, absorbing millions of refugees, and fending off blowback from its own intelligence games. That any sort of coordinated energy transition could emerge from that geopolitical wreckage is not just surprising—it’s remarkable.
Pakistan’s absolute greenhouse gas emissions remain modest on the global scale—roughly 490 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent as of the late 2010s—putting it well outside the top ten global emitters. But that figure masks a more nuanced story. On a per capita basis, Pakistan’s emissions hover around 2 tonnes per person, dramatically lower than the global average of over 6 tonnes and far below the 15–20 tonnes per person typical of the U.S., Canada, or Australia. It’s a similar story when you look at historical emissions: Pakistan has contributed less than 1% of cumulative global CO₂ since the Industrial Revolution.
But when measured against economic output, the picture shifts. Pakistan’s carbon intensity per unit of GDP is significantly higher than that of most developed countries—meaning it emits more carbon for each dollar of economic activity. This reflects its fossil-heavy energy mix, inefficient industrial base, and reliance on aging infrastructure. In effect, Pakistan is both under-emitting in human terms and over-emitting in economic ones—a country still trying to lift millions out of poverty without locking itself into a carbon-intensive development model. The clean tech boom now underway is a rare opportunity to shift both metrics in the right direction.
How does a country once considered a textbook fragile state leapfrog into solar hyperscale? You can’t make sense of it without going back two decades. In the early 2000s, Pakistan was better known for insurgencies and instability than infrastructure upgrades. Terror attacks were frequent, electricity shortages were the norm, and governance was, to put it kindly, patchy. Political cycles flipped with the military’s mood, floods battered the countryside, and inflation hollowed out public services. Not exactly the backdrop for a clean tech success story.
But something changed. Slowly, unevenly, Pakistan started building institutional muscle. The terrorism that plagued the country for over a decade was brought under control through a combination of military operations and negotiated truces. Civilian governments, for all their dysfunction, managed peaceful handovers of power. The technocratic class—policy analysts, engineers, civil servants—began steering the country toward energy pragmatism. It wasn’t a revolution. It was governance on hard mode, with better outcomes.
It wasn’t just Pakistan. As Kishore Mahbubani points out in Has the West Lost It?, this is part of a broader Asian playbook—one that prioritizes order, competence, and steady economic gains over ideological grandstanding. Across Asia, countries battered by conflict and colonial hangovers have been converging on a kind of strategic calm, building quietly and governing smarter. Pakistan may have taken longer to join the club, but its trajectory—fighting its way out of chaos and into functionality—is just another chapter in the region’s larger story of post-crisis, post-colonial increase in resilience.
That’s what set the stage for the current explosion in solar power. For years, Pakistan’s grid was a source of national frustration—rolling blackouts, wild tariff swings, and a chronic overreliance on imported fossil fuels. The tipping point came when utility-scale and industrial solar started making simple economic sense. With Chinese panel prices crashing through the floor and diesel generator costs spiraling out of control, even small business owners started doing the math. The answer was always the same: buy solar. Add batteries if you can afford them. Cut the grid loose.
In 2024, that decision calculus went mainstream. Import records show 22 gigawatts worth of modules flooding into the country, with many going to private-sector installations behind the meter. Warehouses, textile mills, farms—anything with a flat roof and a balance sheet. The government barely needed to nudge the market. It just removed tariffs, approved net metering, and got out of the way. Good governance.
This isn’t just a solar story, though. Wind has been building quietly in the south for years, especially in the Gharo-Jhimpir corridor. Hydropower continues to play a big role, and bagasse from the sugar industry chips in some renewable electrons too. Battery storage is the next act, mostly in the form of hybrid inverters and lithium-ion packs tucked into homes and businesses. They aren’t grid-scale yet, but they’re everywhere you’d want resilience—factories avoiding outages, households tired of flickering bulbs. The pieces are in place for a distributed energy system that doesn’t wait for the grid to catch up. Which is good, because Pakistan’s grid is not remotely ready for this volume of variable generation. Utilities are already reeling from the revenue shock as high-value customers opt out of dependence. No one likes selling electrons when your best clients are making their own. That looming utility death spiral? It’s not theoretical in Lahore or Karachi.
No clean energy narrative in 2024 is complete without a few billion dollars earmarked for electrolyzers and green ammonia export fantasies. Pakistan has joined the chorus, announcing plans for a 400 MW green hydrogen project tied to solar and wind inputs. On paper, it all looks impressive: local renewables, domestic production, value-added exports. In practice, this has all the telltale signs of falling into the hydrogen-as-energy trap. Hydrogen is a lousy carrier of energy for most end uses, with terrible round-trip efficiency and a host of infrastructure headaches. But it can make sense in industrial processes, especially for fertilizer production—something Pakistan actually needs. If policymakers keep the focus on decarbonizing ammonia and refining, rather than dreaming of hydrogen cars and home boilers, they might just avoid the detour that’s tripped up wealthier nations.
Pakistan’s electric vehicle transition is picking up momentum too, driven by a mix of foreign investment and homegrown innovation. Chinese companies have taken the lead in setting up large-scale operations, with firms like BYD announcing plans to open a production facility in Karachi and the ADM Group committing $350 million to build EV manufacturing capacity and install thousands of charging stations nationwide. These moves dovetail with Pakistan’s goal to convert 30% of all vehicles to electric by 2030.
But the real action is happening closer to the ground, where indigenous startups are rolling out electric two- and three-wheelers at a pace that could reshape urban mobility. Companies like Jolta Electric and Vlektra are assembling locally made e-motorcycles that target the country’s massive base of two-wheeler users—millions of whom rely on scooters and bikes for daily transport. With soaring petrol prices and worsening air quality in cities like Lahore and Karachi, these electric alternatives are fast becoming the obvious choice. The economics are simple: lower fuel costs, less maintenance, and in many cases, the ability to charge with rooftop solar. While car-scale EV adoption remains limited, the grassroots uptake of electric bikes and rickshaws—many of them assembled in Pakistan—is proving that the EV revolution here will likely be led from the bottom up.
All of this hardware only matters if it’s backed by credible climate policy. For a long time, Pakistan was a spectator in the global climate arena—vulnerable, poor, and preoccupied with security. But its stance shifted after joining the Paris Agreement. The initial emissions target, a 20 percent reduction from business-as-usual by 2030, was cautious and heavily conditional. Then came the 2021 update, and suddenly Pakistan was talking big: a 50 percent reduction from its projected 2030 emissions, with 15 percent of that unconditionally promised. That’s not a trivial shift. It meant serious buy-in from ministries, financing plans, and coordination across sectors.
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. One of the most visible symbols of this shift is the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami, an audacious reforestation campaign launched to combat deforestation, restore degraded land, and absorb carbon emissions. It builds on the earlier Billion Tree Tsunami in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which was once met with skepticism but ended up exceeding planting targets and winning international praise.
Now scaled nationwide, the initiative isn’t just about trees—it’s a public signal that the country sees climate as a front-and-center issue, not a side project. In a nation hammered by floods, droughts, and record heat, this kind of program isn’t ornamental—it’s survival strategy. More importantly, it reflects a shift in how state capacity is being applied: not to suppress or control, but to regenerate. For a country that spent decades managing crises at gunpoint or through donor dependency, the sight of civil servants mobilizing for climate resilience marks a profound change. It’s not perfect—no national program this ambitious ever is—but it’s real, it’s scaled, and it’s rooted in the same quiet competence now driving Pakistan’s clean energy boom.
The real beauty of this story is how unglamorous it is. Pakistan isn’t trying to become a Silicon Valley of solar. It’s not chasing unicorn valuations or plastering press releases with blockchain buzzwords. It’s solving energy poverty with sunlight and silicon. It’s trading diesel for distributed storage. It’s moving from grid collapse to gridless competence. It’s trading petrol for electrons. And it’s doing it at a pace that should embarrass countries with ten times the GDP.
That 22 gigawatts isn’t the result of perfect governance or unlimited funds. It’s what happens when global markets make disruptive energy products that fit in containers dirt cheap. Every country should be opening their borders wide to Chinese solar, batteries and EVs. Even Pakistan gets that, so clearly no major western country would be so foolish as to close their borders instead.
From EMBER
Chile's wind and solar generation surpassed 40% of power for the first time in December last year 📈⚡ Throughout 2024, wind and solar generated a RECORD THIRD of Chile's electricity—more than double that in 2019. 🔗 Read more: ember-energy.org/lat...
A most interesting thread from Sarastro on Bluesky.
The past two days we [have] seen something interesting in the European power market: continent wide balancing that is providing security of supply at the lowest prices driven by commercial incentives…
We know that solar and wind and inverse output characteristics. A system that contains both is more secure than one or other alone. This chart from @ember-energy.org makes the point on a European wide scale
You can see that on a European wide scale the combined output of wind and solar is less intermittent than solar and wind alone. These charts do not show the risk of hourly balancing though so you still need a source of flexible generation. [Or storage]
This morning we can see that in action. The French grid is importing power from Spain and exporting it to other markets across the French grid in Northern Europe. That’s how you get solar from southern Europe to Northern Europe and wind from the north to the south
But take a look at the output of the French nukes: the French have reduced nuclear output in response: they are not just wheeling power across the French system they are managing the French system for cost and using the nukes as a battery
It’s a revelation for those (like me) who have thought of nuclear has inflexible. EDF is showing us that at the heart of the European grid is a huge battery, its nuclear park, capable of firming both south solar and northern wind.
Yesterday we saw something similar with wind from the uk being imported into France and French exports to other European countries
But critically the nukes modulating output…
From EMBER
For the first time, the percentage of solar in Europe's electricity generation is now bigger thanthe percentage from coal.
Solar was the fastest growing EU power source in 2024; capacity additions hit a record high and generation was 22% higher than in 2023. Solar (11%, 304 TWh) overtook coal (10%, 269 TWh) for the first time in 2024, meaning coal has fallen from being the third largest EU power source in 2019 to the sixth largest in 2024. This trend is widespread; solar is growing in every EU country, while coal is becoming increasingly marginal. More than half of EU countries either have no coal power or a share below 5% in their power mix. Accelerated clean flexibility and smart electrification are needed to sustain solar growth.
Wind and solar avoided €59 billion in fossil fuel imports since start of Green Deal
In five years of the European Green Deal, a surge in wind and solar generation is the main reason for declining fossil generation. Without wind and solar capacity added since 2019, the EU would have imported 92 billion cubic metres more of fossil gas and 55 million tonnes more of hard coal, costing €59 billion. To maximise future benefits, Member States must continue to implement reforms to accelerate wind power deployment, as delivery currently risks falling short despite cost competitiveness. [Read more here]
Unfortunately, while Europe is making rapid progress on cutting emissions, the rest of the world is not.
From EMBER
So, even if fossil fuel generation didn't peak in 2023, it will peak in 2024 or 2025. Since EVs and PHEVs continue to rise as a percentage of new car sales, and therefore of the existing fleet, and since electricity generation and transport together contribute to ~50% of emissions, total global emissions have prolly peaked or will soon. That's good news. What's not good news is that they won't be falling anywhere near fast enough. But at least they will be falling.
