Pakistan's solar revolt strands China's Belt and Road coal plants

Solar became Pakistan's largest source of electricity in 2025, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026, released on September 29. It estimates solar output rose 85% to 36.3 TWh, about 21.6% of gross generation and roughly 60% more than the country's six Chinese-built reactors produced, even though nuclear output also hit a record 22.5 TWh.

Even that may understate it, because most of the power never passes through a meter. Ember, working from official Pakistani data, estimates that distributed solar generation rose from about 15 TWh to 51 TWh between FY2023 and FY2025, lifting its share of the power mix from 10% to 28% in two years. Cumulative panel imports climbed from under 1 GW in 2018 to more than 51 GW by early 2026, and the country avoided more than $12bn of oil and gas imports by February, according to an analysis by Islamabad-based Renewables First and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

This is one of the fastest bottom-up energy transitions in the developing world, and nobody in Islamabad planned it. It is not wholly unexpected, however, according to regional Newbase Horizon analyst Mark Buckton in Taipei. "Too often, emerging markets in South and Southeast Asia are seen as devoid of long-term foresight on the part of the general public, especially when it comes to renewables integration" Buckton says. "Western energy sector reports on these regions tend to focus on LNG and coal import figures, oftentimes ignoring the booming solar and wind sectors and how these are being used on the ground." To this end, with coverage of Pakistan's power sector dominated by rejected LNG cargoes and Chinese coal debts, farmers, shopkeepers and factory owners have quietly installed more than 20 GW of rooftop and distributed solar - a reality on the streets of Islamabad and Karachi laying bare the cost of the bet China made for a decade: exporting coal power along the Belt and Road.

Stranded on the Arabian Sea

About an hour east of Karachi, the 1,320-MW Port Qasim coal plant, once hailed as a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, now sits beside an industrial zone of about 400 companies whose factory roofs are crowned with solar arrays, Bloomberg reported on September 30. The plant is 51% owned by a subsidiary of state-owned Power Construction Corp. of China (PowerChina), with the remainder held by Al Mirqab Capital, an investment vehicle of former Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani.

Its overdue receivables reached almost $300mn in June, and arrears owed to all Chinese-built plants in Pakistan exceeded $1.5bn by August, according to officials cited by the agency. China has delivered seven coal plants in Pakistan since 2017 at a total cost of about $9.6bn, built by state-owned companies, financed by state banks and insured by Sinosure. Outstanding project debt on those coal assets stood at $3.1bn last year, mostly in dollars, according to Boston University and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

Yet consumption across Pakistan's distribution companies was almost 12% lower in the 12 months to July 2025 than three years earlier. Regulator NEPRA's chairman Waseem Mukhtar has said daytime grid demand has fallen to about 12,000 MW and that Pakistan pays for far more capacity than it needs. Every customer who leaves pushes fixed capacity payments onto those who stay.

"This is like a death spiral for all the utilities," Muhammad Mujahid, executive director of Lahore-based clean-tech importer Innovo Corp., told Bloomberg.

Beijing has so far refused major concessions that would book losses at its state companies and banks. Energy Minister Awais Leghari is asking only for longer maturities. "We are not expecting any haircuts in those terms and conditions," he told the agency.

Coal by the back door

China's President Xi Jinping pledged in 2021 meanwhile that Beijing would build no new coal plants abroad, and China has since cancelled 61.5 GW of planned overseas coal capacity, two-thirds of its pipeline, according to CREA and People of Asia for Climate Solutions. But the pledge has a hole in it.

Off-grid captive coal plants serving industrial parks and mineral smelters, mostly in Indonesia and mostly financed by private Chinese firms, account for 60% of Chinese-backed units brought online since 2021. Over the past year 3.3 GW of Chinese-linked overseas coal entered construction, and 20.5 GW remains in planning without being cancelled.

At home in China, the world's green energy champion commissioned 30 GW of new coal capacity in 1H26 while retiring 2.7 GW, and wasted an estimated 360 TWh of wind and solar output through curtailment, according to a review by CREA and Global Energy Monitor.

As a result, coal generation still rose 3.4%. "It is more likely that China has commissioned too many new coal-fired power plants since 2024," CREA analyst Qi Qin told Inside Climate News.

In essence, a country building itself into the first electrostate sold its partners the fuel it is struggling to wean itself off. Since 2013 China's fossil-fuel investment and construction contracts under the Belt and Road came to about $350bn against $166bn for renewables, including hydropower, according to the University of Queensland and the Green Finance & Development Center. Green energy did reach a record 56% of the total in the first half of this year, but the coal fleet, already built, cannot be unbuilt.

The on-again, off-again war in the Middle East only served to flatter coal, albeit briefly. With the Strait of Hormuz largely shut to tankers and Qatari LNG under force majeure, Pakistan's imported-coal plants have run harder in recent months. The reprieve is expected to be temporary but in the meantime, battery imports from China jumped almost 150% in the first half to about $392mn, and industrial users such as Fauji Cement are adding storage behind the meter.

Islamabad has made its own mistakes: it taxed panel purchases and in February replaced net metering with less generous net billing for new rooftop customers. The better course would be to reform tariffs and renegotiate Chinese capacity contracts, the Newsbase Horizon analyst says, so that consumers have a reason to stay on the grid, and to let cheap utility-scale renewables in rather than penalising the households that got there first.

Latin America looks north

Pakistan is not the only former showcase reassessing its ties to Beijing. Latin America has swung right in a run of elections, and the new governments are increasingly tilting towards Washington.

Chile's Jose Antonio Kast won the December 2025 run-off and on September 22 this year took the country into the US-led Shield of the Americas security alliance. Peru's Keiko Fujimori won the June 7 run-off by 49,641 votes and has joined the same alliance, though she inherits the Chinese state-controlled Chancay megaport.

To the east, Colombia's Abelardo de la Espriella took office on August 7 having told Washington he would quit the Belt and Road deal his predecessor Gustavo Petro signed in May 2025; his government has put membership under review.

And in Brazil, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former president, topped the first round of voting on October 4 with about 47% of the vote against roughly 45% for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to near-complete counts from the Superior Electoral Court. The two meet in a run-off on October 25 and Bolsonaro is widely predicted to win.

China for now remains the biggest trading partner of Brazil, Chile and Peru, and their copper, soybeans and iron ore will keep flowing east. What has changed is that being Beijing's partner no longer comes with a political guarantee, and debt-laden coal plants are a poor advertisement for the deal.

China's best export turns out to be the cheap panel that frees its customers from needing Chinese project finance at all. Pakistan's households worked that out years before the planners in either capital did.