That the world has steadily been moving towards renewable energy solutions, specifically solar, is a no-brainer. The statistics speak for themselves. China’s total capacity in megawatts (MW) in 2009 was a paltry 305. It has hence increased, not tenfold, but a hundred-fold to 30,000MW in 2014. During the same time period, India jumped from 120MW to 3000MW. Countries such as Japan, the United States, Germany and Italy have also moved sharply towards solar energy solutions.

This rapid increase in global production of solar energy can be attributed to a variety of reasons. Most importantly, the cost of solar power plants has gone down by a whopping 65 per cent in the period between 2010-14, while the cost of solar (photovoltaic) modules has also decreased by nearly 70 per cent. At the same time, the average efficiency of these modules has also increased annually by around 0.3 per cent annually, standing currently around just over 16 per cent. This happens to be one of the major points of criticism of investing in a solar future.

As things stand today, Pakistan has a 100MW solar project up and running in the Cholistan desert. It is part of the ambitious Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park (QASP), which, when completed, will be able to produce up to 1000MW of electricity. But does that mean 1000MW of deliverable electricity?

The short answer is no. But then again, no electricity producing mechanism works at a hundred per cent capacity. And as with most things new and shiny, there is a large degree of misinformation making the rounds about solar energy.

Using QA Solar Park as an example, its owners insist that the plant will be able to produce 85MW from its total capacity of 100MW, whereas other experts cite global averages of 20 per cent output as evidence to the contrary. As it so happens, both are right.

"Output from solar projects begins, peaks, decreases and ends with the sun, much like a bell curve," says Dr Gerwin Dreesmann, a world renowned solar expert who was also the technical consultant for the QA Solar Project. "If there are 12 hours of sunlight, then that’s how long electricity is being produced, divide it by 24 hours, and you get a figure which is 50 per cent lower." And this is just at the plant side. When the produced electricity moves from the plant into the grid, there are tremendous line losses, which further decrease the amount of electricity reaching the consumer.

On the face of it, Pakistan seems like ground zero for solar energy, considering the temperatures and amount of sunlight, but as Dr Greesman points out, "At the peak of summer, Pakistan actually crosses the temperatures required for optimal solar energy production."

There are other numerous advantages of investing in solar energy, the most blatant perhaps being the energy source itself. The sun is omnipresent and free for all. (Nearly 40 per cent of Pakistan’s power generation relies on expensive imported furnace oil).

Unlike wind energy which can only be harnessed in select areas, solar energy is not restricted by location and can be put up anywhere in the country. Another major positive is proximity to the grid. Unlike wind and hydel which are location specific and require high infrastructural costs to take their produced electricity into the grid, solar power projects can be set up as close as is necessary to the grid, thereby not only reducing the cost of energy delivery but also reducing line losses in the process.

Under these circumstances, it seems ludicrous to not invest heavily and immediately in a solar future. Unfortunately, there are pressing economic concerns at play as well.

"One of the main reasons why there is so much opposition to solar energy is the tariff. It is just too expensive at the moment," says Khurram Husain, one of the country’s leading business and economic journalists. "A good 80 per cent of the tariff is debt servicing, and since a lot of this financing is coming from foreign (read Chinese) banks, the government can’t really do anything to bring this down at the moment."

But this is how business goes. The first few projects are bound to be expensive as financier confidence will be understandably low, thereby pushing interest rates up, but as more and more projects come alive, and electricity enters the grid, confidence will grow and rates will come down. Also, as Husain puts it, "subsequent players in the solar industry will take advantage of channels that have already been built", and this is bound to bring the cost of solar power down.

And then there is net-metering, the process by which users can sell generated surplus energy back into the grid. While the recently introduced net-metering regulation is a step in the right direction, it remains to be seen how the public will respond to it.

Another energy expert who requested anonymity said that there is opposition coming in from existing players in the power generation business who feel threatened by the possibilities of renewable energy. "The oil cartels, the LNG cartels etc, don’t want a change in the status quo," he says. "They over-estimate what renewable energy can deliver in Pakistan."

Renewable energy solutions alone cannot solve Pakistan’s power crisis. What they can do is take the pressure off the traditional forms of energy generation and also create a localised mechanism for the production and delivery of energy. If it didn’t make sense, most of the developed world would not be investing so heavily in these forms of energy. Pakistan can start catching up now, or later. The choice is ours.