KARACHI: Pakistanis installed rooftop solar at an unprecedented pace in 2024, slashing national grid demand and diesel sales as households and farmers embraced cheaper, decentralised power, according to environmentalist and author Bill McKibben.
The grassroots movement, which has blindsided analysts and bypassed government utilities, is driven by cheap Chinese panels and DIY tutorials on social media platforms like TikTok, McKibben added.
Speaking on the Energy Capital podcast hosted by Doug Lewin, McKibben said that the first sign something was amiss came when energy analysts noticed a perplexing trend -- demand for electricity on Pakistan’s national grid was falling.
“As you know as an energy analyst, humans never use less energy. Demand number always goes up,” McKibben explained. “The fact that it was dropping was befuddling.”
The answer was found not in government reports, but on satellite images. Analysts examining Google Earth saw rooftops in cities like Lahore and Karachi rapidly being covered in solar panels. “You could watch solar panels spreading like mushrooms after a rainstorm,” McKibben said. “The growth was week to week.”
This quiet revolution was fuelled by two key factors, the mass availability of low-cost solar panels from neighbouring China and the viral spread of knowledge on social media. Hundreds of TikTok videos provided step-by-step instructions, empowering citizens to install the systems themselves.
The economic impact has been immediate and large-scale, particularly in rural areas. Farmers, who traditionally relied on expensive diesel generators to power water pumps, led the charge. Their rapid adoption of solar caused national diesel sales to plummet by 35 per cent in a single year, Lewin posted on his X account.
“Farmers were the first people to really start doing this,” noted McKibben. He described how many, lacking funds for steel supports, simply laid the panels on the ground and pointed them at the sun -- a testament to the movement’s pragmatic, cost-driven nature. The surge in distributed generation has led to a historic decline in demand on the national grid, challenging the traditional utility model, Lewin added. A research article published by ‘Business Recorder’ on Friday said that while electricity demand and generation profiles are not supposed to transform dramatically within twelve months, Pakistan’s July 2025 versus July 2024 hourly electricity curves tell a strikingly different story. Uncoordinated rooftop solar adoption is dramatically reshaping Pakistan’s national electricity demand and generation profiles, leading to significant structural shifts in how electricity is consumed and produced. This transformation is not being managed by control rooms but is driven by a “solar rush” on rooftops across the country, particularly from off-grid and net-metered installations, the article reported.
According to the research, July 2025 electricity patterns show steep midday demand drops and sharp evening surges, a phenomenon called the ‘duck curve’ effect. Daytime demand fell by nearly 2,000MW compared to July 2024 as rooftop solar cut grid reliance, while evening peaks intensified, requiring costlier fuel-based generation.
In his post on X (formerly Twitter), macroeconomist Ammar Habib Khan said that more than 20GW of behind-the-metre solar capacity exists in Pakistan at this point.AFP reported in July that solar power made up less than 2.0 per cent of the energy mix in 2020 and reached 10.3 per cent in 2024, according to the global energy think tank Ember. But in a remarkable acceleration, it added, it more than doubled to 24 per cent in the first five months of 2025, becoming the largest source of energy production for the first time.
Many users on X say that the phenomenon in Pakistan serves as a powerful case study for the developing world, demonstrating a path to rapid electrification that circumvents the slow and capital-intensive process of building large-scale, centralised power infrastructure.
McKibben concluded that the transformation is not just a local story but a global signal. “Those are the kind of numbers that change the world.”