Comment by Riaz Haq on July 14, 2026 at 8:46am

Electrification in developing countries . By replacing polluting fuels, it prevents respiratory illnesses, while grid access powers reliable refrigeration for clinics and allows children to study after dark. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The profound advantages of electrification extend across several vital pillars of development:

• Public Health and Environment: Access to electricity eliminates the need for kerosene lamps and indoor wood-burning stoves, significantly reducing severe household air pollution and dangerous burn hazards. It also enables 24/7 emergency services, safe vaccine storage, and the operation of water pumps to provide clean, potable drinking water. [1, 2, 3]
• Education and Gender Equality: Electric lighting extends study hours for students, particularly in rural areas. Furthermore, it reduces the time women and girls spend gathering traditional, manual fuels (like wood and dung), allowing them to pursue education or formal employment. [1]
• Economic Development: Electrification powers microenterprises, cold storage for farmers, and modern manufacturing. While short-term income gains are often localized, studies on universal access projects (like those modeled by the UNDP Data Futures Exchange) estimate massive long-term GDP growth. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Modern Transportation (E-Mobility): Transitioning to electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and buses in urban centers drastically lowers operating and maintenance costs for low-income commuters compared to traditional internal combustion engines. [1, 2]

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 24, 2026 at 6:04pm

Pakistan's electricity generation mix has rapidly shifted toward renewable energy, driven by a massive distributed solar boom. As of recent 2025–2026 data, grid-connected and behind-the-meter solar accounts for roughly 25-28% of the country's generation. Overall, low-carbon and zero-emission sources now make up over 55% of Pakistan's total generated electricity. [1, 2, 3]

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-solarisation-of-pakist...

The breakdown of Pakistan's electricity generation includes the following sources:
Solar & Distributed Renewables: ~25% to 28%
Hydropower: ~24% to 29%
Fossil Fuels (Thermal): ~35% to 40% (comprising a mix of imported coal, domestic coal, natural gas, and furnace oil)
Nuclear Power: ~9% to 11%
Wind: ~3% to 5% [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Key Trends:
The Solar Transition: Over the last two years, national electricity demand surged by 21%, with the entirety of this growth met by behind-the-meter residential and commercial solar installations. This explosive growth—totaling an estimated 38 GW of distributed solar capacity—has lowered daytime reliance on the national grid. [1]
Long-Term Goals: Under its clean energy transition plan, Pakistan aims for 58% of its overall electricity generation to stem from renewable sources by 2030. [1]

Comment by Riaz Haq on Saturday

Pakistan imported an estimated cumulative total of 7.6 GWh (7,600,000 MWh) of battery storage systems between 2018 and the end of 2025, with imports continuing at a pace exceeding 5 GWh per year and hitting a record single-month volume of 652.2 MWh in April 2026. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Import Timeline & Milestones
2018–2025 Total: Roughly 7,600,000 MWh (7.6 GWh) of cumulative battery storage imports, with about 60% of that total arriving during 2025 alone. [1]
2024–Early 2025: An estimated 1,250,000 MWh (1.25 GWh) imported in 2024, followed by another 400,000 MWh (0.4 GWh) in the first two months of 2025. [1, 2]
April 2026 Peak: A record single-month high of 652.2 MWh of lithium-ion batteries was imported in April 2026 as consumers and industries shifted heavily toward storage. [1]
Current Import Pace: Ongoing imports are tracking at a rate of more than 5,000,000 MWh (5 GWh) per year. [1]


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Batteries Beat the Grid: Pakistanis Skip Net Metering

https://www.techjuice.pk/batteries-beat-the-grid-pakistanis-skip-ne...

Pakistani households are increasingly storing solar-generated electricity in batteries rather than selling it back to the national grid, a shift triggered by the implementation of net metering regulations that has created a new challenge for the government.

According to a report on the Pakistan Battery Import Market, the country has imported batteries with a cumulative capacity of 6.004 GW since January 2024.

April 2026 recorded the highest monthly import volume, with battery capacity reaching 652.2 MW. During that month alone, Pakistani citizens invested Rs126 billion in battery purchases.

Pakistan total power generation capacity, excluding solar, stands at 39,000 MW. Transmission and distribution losses account for up to 18 percent of this total generation capacity.

In response to the rising volume of battery imports, the government has begun drafting a National Battery Framework. Officials note that the growth in solar and battery adoption in Pakistan is outpacing the trend seen in other countries across the region.

Globally, energy storage capacity is projected to reach 1.5 million MW by 2030. Industry estimates suggest global investment in battery storage will total $1.2 trillion between 2024 and 2035.

Comment by Riaz Haq on Saturday

Recent Wall Street Journal coverage highlights that sodium-based batteries—built using abundant materials like table salt and iron—are emerging as cheaper, safer, and China-free alternatives to traditional lithium-ion batteries for grid storage and electric vehicles.Key Advantages of Sodium BatteriesLower Cost: Made with inexpensive, common ingredients like food-grade table salt, reducing reliance on expensive lithium, cobalt, and copper.Enhanced Safety: Far less prone to thermal runaway fires, and capable of being passively air-cooled rather than needing expensive liquid-chilling systems.Cold Weather Performance: Retain significantly more charge capacity in sub-zero freezing temperatures compared to conventional lithium cells.Industry and Market ShiftsU.S. Startups & Giants: American companies like Peak Energy and Inlyte Energy are racing to scale domestic production for stationary power storage, while General Motors designs its own sodium-based cells.Chinese Production: Major global battery makers like CATL are advancing mass production and deploying sodium-ion technology into both grid systems and smaller city electric vehicles.Market Projections: Analysts project that sodium could capture over a third of global battery production within a decade as supply chains diversify away from lithium.


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China-free batteries made from salt are finally here

While grid battery storage is already growing in the U.S. at a furious pace, new sodium-based batteries are potentially cheaper, longer-lasting, safer and more reliable than conventional, lithium-based ones. They could accelerate the rollout of renewables, and be part of less-polluting alternatives to natural-gas turbines and diesel generators.

Most sodium-based batteries are now made in China, and represent less than 1% of all batteries delivered this year. In the U.S., a number of startups have begun producing small numbers of such batteries, and are racing to scale up production. One industrial giant—General Motors —is in the process of designing its own sodium-based batteries to tailor them to different applications before moving to mass production.

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/china-free-batteries-made-f...

Comment by Riaz Haq 2 hours ago

Pakistan Building A Digital And Green Future - OpEd - Eurasia Review

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10082026-pakistan-building-a-digital-...

By Dr. Hamza Khan

Pakistan’s youth bulge and three concurrent transitions—digital export growth, decentralised solar power, and data-driven agriculture—create an opportunity to link these sectors into a single, higher-productivity development model.
ICT exports and freelancing are already generating multi-billion-dollar inflows and a trade surplus, while rapid solar expansion (now supplying a majority of low-carbon power) can cut costs for firms and farms if storage, grids and pricing keep pace.
Agri-tech focused on water efficiency, satellite intelligence and inclusive digital platforms can raise farm incomes and resilience, but success depends on institutions that turn parallel gains into a connected system rather than isolated privileges.


Pakistan’s development debate is often trapped between crisis management and distant promises. A better reading of the country in 2026 is that three transitions are already underway: services are becoming digitally exportable, electricity is becoming decentralised and low-carbon, and agriculture is acquiring a data layer. The 2023 national census confirms an overwhelmingly young society, with roughly three-fifths of citizens below 25. That youth bulge can become either an employment burden or the workforce of a new production model.

The opportunity is not to celebrate IT, solar power and agri-tech separately, but to connect them. Digital exports can ease Pakistan’s foreign-exchange constraint; distributed energy can reduce costs for firms and farms; and data-driven agriculture can raise productivity while conserving water. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey’s technology chapter, Pakistan had 207.22 million telecom subscriptions and 160.9 million broadband connections by March 2026. The latest technology-export figures show receipts reaching approximately US$4.18 billion during July-May, FY2025-26, about 20 percent higher year on year, with US$373 million earned in May.

Digital Exports: Moving Beyond Low-Cost Labour
Technology is no longer peripheral. The Economic Survey records 34,420 registered IT and IT-enabled-services companies by March 2026. ICT exports produced a US$2.91 billion trade surplus during July-March, 86 percent of sectoral receipts, while verified technology-related freelancer inflows reached US$856.3 million in nine months and exceeded US$1 billion by May. This transaction-based figure is more defensible than broader US$1.6 billion estimates that may include additional categories.



Pakistan must now move freelancers and software houses from one-off assignments towards recurring contracts in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud services, gaming, fintech and business-process engineering. DigiSkills has delivered more than 5.51 million trainings, but scale must be matched by recognised certification, communication skills, intellectual-property protection and dependable connectivity. The Digital Nation Pakistan Act 2025provides a framework for digital public infrastructure and data governance. Its value will depend on whether firms can securely verify identities, receive payments, obtain credit and access public services efficiently.

Comment by Riaz Haq 2 hours ago

Pakistan Building A Digital And Green Future - OpEd - Eurasia Review

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10082026-pakistan-building-a-digital-...

By Dr. Hamza Khan

Solar Power as Industrial Policy
Pakistan’s solar expansion is among the world’s most striking bottom-up energy transitions. A REN21 assessment estimated that net-metered rooftop capacity reached 5.3 GW by April 2025, nearly ten times its level two years earlier. Ember’s latest country dataindicate that low-carbon sources supplied 55 percent of Pakistan’s electricity in 2025. The recommended scenario in the IGCEP 2025-35 projects renewables, including hydropower, producing 69 percent of electricity by 2034-35, with solar and wind supplying 10 percent each.



Solarisation should be treated as industrial policy, not simply climate policy. Affordable daytime electricity can power software campuses, cold chains, food processing, electric mobility and small manufacturing. The danger is a two-tier system in which affluent consumers leave the grid while poorer households inherit fixed capacity costs. Pakistan needs storage, stronger distribution networks, time-of-use pricing and incentives for productive daytime demand. The transition will last only if it lowers economy-wide costs rather than shifting them between consumers. Pakistan’s own generation plan warns that after 2027, thermal plants alone may be unable to manage the ramping pressures created by rising solar integration, strengthening the case for battery storage and grid modernisation.

Agri-Tech: The Critical Convergence Test
The FY2025-26 agriculture survey reports that agriculture contributed 23.44 percent of GDP and grew by 2.89 percent. Yet surface-water availability was 92 million acre-feet, 11.1 percent below average system usage. Agri-tech must therefore focus on resource productivity, not fashionable hardware. Satellite crop intelligence, moisture sensors, weather forecasting, precision fertiliser use, digital marketplaces and solar-powered cold storage can reduce waste and improve margins. Solar irrigation, however, must be paired with groundwater monitoring or cheaper pumping could accelerate aquifer depletion.



The National Agri Stack roadmap offers an architecture based on verified farmer identities, integrated land data, satellite intelligence, digital payments, credit, crop insurance and market links. Three to four pilots were prioritised for the first 12-18 months. Inclusion will be decisive: tenant farmers, women, sharecroppers and farmers without clear land titles must not disappear from a system built around formal records. Success should mean higher incomes, lower post-harvest losses, improved water efficiency and faster finance, not merely more registered users.

From Parallel Successes to One Production System
Pakistan can create a circular development model: digitally skilled workers generate export income; renewable power lowers production costs; and digital platforms help agriculture use energy, water, finance and logistics more efficiently. This convergence can narrow the urban-rural divide because software, payments, advisory services and distributed electricity can reach places where large industrial investment may not. It also offers Pakistan a new export identity, one based not only on goods produced domestically, but on knowledge, digitally enabled services and climate-smart agricultural value chains.



The country is not guaranteed a digital and green future; it must build the institutions that make one possible. That requires stable internet, competitive energy markets, interoperable public data, cybersecurity, technical education, patient capital and transparent regulation. Pakistan’s most promising transformation is not any single sector, but a connected system in which code earns foreign exchange, clean power reduces vulnerability and intelligence applied to farms strengthens food security. The future will be secured when digital capability and green infrastructure become instruments of mass productivity rather than islands of privilege.

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