In a recent post on X, Atif Mian argued that Pakistan could, by following China’s path and rapidly shifting to electric motorbikes and rickshaws, effectively drive petrol costs down to the equivalent of Rs 30 per litre. The claim, striking in its simplicity, has gained traction in a country weary of high fuel prices and repeated external crises.

But the proposition rests on a comparison that collapses under scrutiny. China’s transition to electric mobility was not a response to fuel prices alone; it was the outcome of a deeply industrialised ecosystem—domestic battery manufacturing, integrated EV supply chains, reliable and scalable power infrastructure, and dense urban charging and battery-swapping networks. Pakistan, by contrast, is struggling to supply electricity reliably even to its existing demand base, with persistent outages, high system losses, and severe financial stress across the power chain.

The issue is not whether petrol is expensive or whether electric alternatives exist. It is that Pakistan’s energy system is structurally incapable of delivering affordable, reliable power at scale. Without fixing that system—its transmission bottlenecks, distribution failures, and unsustainable financial architecture—shifting transport from petrol to electricity risks simply relocating the crisis rather than resolving it.

Pakistan’s power crisis is still being described as a shortage of electricity. It is not. It is the failure of a system that cannot convert installed capacity into dependable, deliverable power at the hour it is needed—and cannot afford the capacity it has already built, nor efficiently move or collect payment for it.

The stress visible in April 2026 reflects this contradiction with unusual clarity. Across much of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, outages have averaged six to eight hours a day, extending far longer on weaker feeders. At the system level, the evening deficit has typically ranged between 2,500 and 4,000 MW.

The immediate causes are straightforward: RLNG-based generation, which in normal conditions can contribute 4,000–6,000 MW during peak periods, has at times fallen below 1,000 MW due to supply and pricing constraints. Hydropower, which can exceed 10,000 MW in high-flow months, has been running several thousand megawatts lower due to seasonal water availability and reservoir management decisions. These shocks are real—but they become crises only because of how the system is structured.

Seasonality is a critical but underappreciated fault line. Hydropower—one of Pakistan’s largest and cheapest energy sources—fluctuates sharply across the year because it is fundamentally a flow-dependent system with storage constraints. In peak summer months, when snowmelt and monsoon inflows are high, hydro can contribute roughly a quarter or more of total generation.

Cheap coal and renewable generation in the south cannot be fully dispatched, while the north relies on more expensive or fuel-constrained plants—or experiences load-shedding when those plants are unavailable

Cheap coal and renewable generation in the south cannot be fully dispatched, while the north relies on more expensive or fuel-constrained plants—or experiences load-shedding when those plants are unavailable

In winter, output can fall by more than half, removing several thousand megawatts of low-cost supply from the system. This seasonal decline coincides with rising gas demand for heating and tighter LNG availability, forcing a structural shift toward more expensive and imported fuels. The result is not a cyclical inconvenience but a predictable annual tightening of the entire energy balance that the system has never designed around through storage, diversification, or demand shaping.

On paper, Pakistan has roughly 45,000–46,000 MW of installed capacity. In practice, that number is misleading because it reflects engineering nameplate capacity rather than economically and physically dispatchable power.

The more relevant question is how much electricity the system actually produces—and from which sources.

Thermal generation remains dominant, but its composition has shifted significantly. Gas and RLNG together now contribute roughly a fifth of total electricity in many months, down from higher levels earlier in the decade, reflecting both fuel constraints and declining utilisation. Coal—split between imported coal and Thar lignite—has risen to roughly a quarter to nearly a third of generation, becoming the system’s........

© The Friday Times