Solar Power - From Lahore to Indiana

 A surprise solar boom reveals a fatal flaw in our climate change projections by Noah Gordon and Daevan Mangalmurti (Vox) makes me wonder why, if there is this kind of growth in Pakistan, it is not happening here.

In the process, Pakistan has gone from an inconsequential solar market to the sixth-largest in the world. The country of 242 million has a power grid with a peak capacity of 46 gigawatts — that’s less than 4 percent of the US power supply for a country with more than two-thirds as many people. In the last three years, Pakistanis have imported more than 25 gigawatts of solar panels from China. This disorganized, bottom-up boom has increased Pakistan’s power supply by 50 percent.

The solar surge is driven by high local electricity costs. At 16.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, Pakistan’s electricity rate for businesses is 37 percent higher than its neighbor India, and more than double the average rate in Asia. Agreements made in the 1990s have kept the state stuck in expensive contracts with independent power producers, and power plants burn lots of liquefied natural gas, which became costlier after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. That same year, Pakistan fell into a foreign exchange crisis as the country’s dollar reserves plunged, which made everything more expensive.

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The world’s growing middle class isn’t waiting for permission to buy air conditioners. The task now is to make sure that the energy that powers them is clean — and that means having more than enough solar panels for Lahore as well as Copenhagen.

And why not as well as for Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Anderson, Muncie, Anderson, and Switz City?

Long ago, I proposed that Anderson undergo the effort to put solar or wind power atop every house and business by offering a deduction from property taxes by exchanging any excess back to the city. Absolutely no interest in the idea. Which I suppose comes from the city wanting to be tainted by a disreputable sort like me. An idea is an idea. 

What Anderson, Muncie, Marion, and Kokomo have forgotten is that they rose as producers of energy. From that came their careers as manufacturing centers. If we can create a citizens energy grid, that will hurt the utility companies who have failed to move to renewable energy. If enough surplus energy is created, this should be an inducement to bring jobs to this area. 

We have a deep and abiding poverty in our leaders, whether in the statehouse or in mayors' offices. It is a poverty of imagination.

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