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Pakistanis fed up with high utility costs are helping the country become one of the world's biggest markets for solar energy. Betsy Joles reports from Islamabad.
BETSY JOLES, BYLINE: In a village on the edge of Pakistan's capital city, Islamabad, chirping birds are drowned out by the whir of fans.
(SOUNDBITE OF FANS WHIRRING)
JOLES: It's the only way to cope with the heat, says resident Shinas Nasib (ph).
SHINAS NASIB: (Non-English language spoken).
JOLES: "It's so hot here, we're all worried," she says. In recent years, human-caused climate change has accelerated warming and contributed to extreme weather in Pakistan.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
JOLES: Near Nasib's house, goats and chickens graze outside under the blazing afternoon sun.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
JOLES: Nasib and her neighbors usually spend peak sunlight hours during the summer inside. But when daily power cuts occur, the fans stop working. So Nasib's family decided to invest in a solar panel. "The fan works when we put it in the sun," Nasib says. "It is truly a good thing."
NASIB: (Non-English language spoken).
JOLES: Solar energy has taken Pakistan by storm. This boom can be seen on rooftops around the country, which now glimmer with rows and rows of solar panels. Solar helps reduce planet-heating pollution. Jan Rosenow at the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute says Pakistan's solar boom is in many ways remarkable.
JAN ROSENOW: The scale of solar being deployed in such a short period of time has not been seen, I think, anywhere ever before.
JOLES: Things really took off last year when an oversupply of solar panels from China flooded the Pakistani market and pushed prices for this technology way down. Pakistanis were quick to buy them up. Waqas Moosa, chairman of the Pakistan Solar Association, says Pakistan's solar rush is unique because it was almost entirely people-driven.
WAQAS MOOSA: Individuals have made this decision, so it's like a democratization of solar.
JOLES: But it's mostly out of necessity, not environmental concerns. Pakistan has the most expensive electricity in the region. And an unreliable grid is blamed for power outages and even countrywide blackouts. Moosa says some Pakistani solar users may soon go completely off grid as they get access to cheaper and more reliable batteries. Then they could store solar power and use it during non-sunlight hours.
MOOSA: Batteries are coming to town, you know? Everything is now put in place.
JOLES: But as more and more people get solar and leave the grid behind, that presents a financial challenge.
AWAIS LEGHARI: Demand has gone down. The same number of payments need to be made by a lesser number of consumers.
JOLES: This is Pakistan's energy minister, Awais Leghari. He says the government is looking for ways to bring more industrial consumers onto the grid while planning targeted subsidies for low-income users.
LEGHARI: Our challenge is to get the demand to go up.
JOLES: Last month, the government announced a 10% tax on imported solar panels, almost all of which come from China. It was initially announced at 18%, which many solar advocates protested. Khalid Waleed, an energy economist at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, says many have already poured their savings into solar.
KHALID WALEED: People have invested their retirement benefits, their remittances money. And even the female of the household, they sell their gold just to sort of offset that increasing electricity bills.
JOLES: He says the group that might get priced out of solar is the same one that may have to pay higher electricity prices to make up for those who've left the grid.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
JOLES: At a training course at National Skills University in Islamabad, students want to be part of the solar boom. Forty-two-year-old electrician Adnan Shams (ph), who's learning how to install solar, says this kind of work is increasing because people are seeing the benefits.
ADNAN SHAMS: (Non-English language spoken).
JOLES: Because of this, he expects it to be a busy summer.
For NPR News, I'm Betsy Joles in Islamabad.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAKUYA KURODA'S "RISING SON") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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