The last couple of years have seen ordinary Pakistanis turning to the sun for relief, when amid prolonged summer power cuts and skyrocketing electricity bills, rooftop solar panels offered a lifeline–a way to keep the lights on and costs down when the national grid faltered. That lifeline is now under threat.
In a startling policy shift, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has officially ended the one-for-one net metering arrangement, making sure that every unit of electricity from the grid will be billed at full price, while every unit sent back to the grid from a rooftop panel will earn only a fraction in return.
There are already nearly half a million Pakistani households and businesses feeding solar energy into the grid. The country became one of the world’s top new solar adopters, importing roughly 22 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels in 2024 alone. This grassroots solar revolution had brought a measure of independence to its participants as net metering became one of the few pressure valves in a chronically mismanaged power sector, easing load on the grid and offering consumers some predictability. Now, those same people have been dealt a gut punch. A system that might have paid for itself in five or six years could now take well over a decade to break even, and more tragically, citizens, who scrimped and saved to install panels, are being told their clean energy is almost worthless to the state.
The regulator’s justification centres on cost-shifting, arguing that when solar-equipped households sharply reduce their bills, fixed grid costs are recovered from a smaller pool of consumers. This concern is not without merit. But instead of a smart solution (such as time-of-use pricing, small fixed charges or gradual tariff rebalancing), the authorities chose a sledgehammer approach: effectively taxing the sun.
The implications of this decision reach far beyond individual wallets. Pakistan’s repeated commitments to expand renewable energy have produced limited results, and rooftop solar was one area where adoption grew despite institutional inertia. It’s hard to imagine a more counterproductive move at a time when the authorities should be incentivising green energy. Ironically, this reform may hurt the power sector it meant to help. If exporting surplus electricity becomes uneconomical, many solar users will simply consume what they generate or invest in storage to bypass the grid altogether. The likely outcome is more consumers defecting from the grid, which would shrink the utility customer base further.
Meanwhile, those who can’t afford solar in the first place get no relief whatsoever. In fact, the new rules could widen the gap between haves and have-nots, considering how the lower-income households were never the main net metering beneficiaries (the upfront cost of panels is too steep), and now it’s even less likely they’ll take the plunge.
All in all, clean energy in Pakistan risks becoming a luxury only the well-off can truly leverage, as others are left paying ever-higher bills and burning candles during load-shedding. *