ANTALYA: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told a clean-energy dialogue at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya on Wednesday that Pakistan has added nearly 22 gigawatts of rooftop solar capacity in just two years, and he put the country’s clean-energy financing need at about $188 billion by 2035.
Speaking at the “Clean Energy Transition by 2035: Powering the Future” dialogue on the sidelines of the summit, Sharif described the solar growth as a grassroots shift by households and businesses seeking affordable and reliable electricity. He said clean sources now provide nearly 55 percent of Pakistan’s energy mix, that a 1,200-megawatt nuclear power plant has been inaugurated, and that a new auto policy aims for 30 percent of new vehicles to be electric by 2030, with more than 10 percent of motorcycle sales already electric.
On financing, the prime minister said Pakistan will require about $138 billion by 2035 to develop low-carbon electricity generation and another $50 billion to replace coal-fired power with solar energy. The global 35-by-35 electrification target, which aims to raise electricity’s share of final energy use to about 35 percent by 2035, “will be achieved only if finance flows at the speed of ambition through concessional capital and transfer of affordable technology,” he said.
The figures are the prime minister’s own. Pakistan’s rooftop solar boom has been widely reported as families and businesses turned to their own panels through years of high grid electricity prices, but estimates of how much capacity has actually been installed vary, and the 22-gigawatt figure has not been independently verified.
Climate finance for developing countries is a central theme of the Antalya summit, where Pakistan, one of the countries most exposed to flooding and heat, has pressed for funding that matches the scale of the transition it is asking its citizens to make.
