Pakistan is witnessing a paradox rarely seen in developing economies: citizens are moving faster towards clean energy than the state itself. Rooftop solar has spread across urban neighbourhoods and semi-urban settlements not because of idealism or climate commitments, but because grid electricity has become prohibitively expensive and unreliable. Yet just as this bottom-up energy transition began easing pressure on household finances and foreign exchange reserves, the government has once again chosen to change the rules.

The recent recommendation by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) to shift from net metering to gross metering, alongside reduced buy-back tariffs for new solar consumers, has reopened a fundamental question Pakistan has avoided for decades: why does the country revise energy policy every year, sometimes every quarter, and why can it not commit to a long-term framework?

Over the past four years, Pakistan has imported more than $4 billion worth of solar panels, while rooftop solar capacity under net metering has crossed 6,000 megawatts. In financial year 2024 alone, grid electricity sales declined by 3.2 billion units, causing losses of roughly Rs 101 billion to distribution companies. This shift also exposed a deeper structural flaw in the power sector: capacity payments to independent power producers (IPPs), which now exceed Rs 1.9 trillion annually, are payable regardless of whether electricity is consumed or not.

Faced with falling demand and rising fixed costs, the state opted for a familiar response: tariff adjustment instead of structural reform. Under the proposed gross metering regime, new solar users will sell electricity to the grid at around Rs 11.30 per unit, while purchasing grid power at full consumer tariffs that can exceed Rs 50 per unit. Existing net-metering consumers will retain the earlier rate of Rs 22 per unit only until their........

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