Pakistan Builds First Integrated Energy Model for Net Zero 2050 — Renewables to Become Main Power Contributor

Pakistan's Power Division has finalised Pak-IEM 2.0 — the country's first integrated, optimisation-based energy planning model capable of pricing long-term policy choices against a 2050 horizon. Developed in collaboration with Germany's GTZ and the Energy Planning and Resource Centre, the model is built on the internationally recognised TIMES-VEDA framework used by the IEA and most OECD ministries of energy.

The headline finding from the first published run: under the Net Zero pathway, renewable energy becomes the main contributor to Pakistan's power generation, and emissions from the power sector fall by approximately 50% by 2050. That's not aspirational policy text — it's the optimised, least-cost output the model produces when net-zero is set as a binding constraint.

The two scenarios on the table

Pak-IEM 2.0 has been run with two reference cases, designed to bracket the realistic decision space:

• Least Cost Baseline — assumes current policies as of July 2025 continue, with cost-efficient technology adoption but no binding decarbonisation targets. Energy demand grows ~2.5x by 2050; final energy demand rises ~30%; renewables become the largest power-generation contributor by default, mostly because their levelised cost beats new fossil-fuel build.
• Net Zero Energy — aligns Pakistan's energy sector with a 2050 net-zero target. Electricity generation is fully decarbonised after 2040, with net-negative emissions by mid-century via bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and similar technologies. ~50% emission reduction from the power sector even before the BECCS contribution.

Why this matters for policy

Before Pak-IEM 2.0, Pakistan's long-term energy planning relied on the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP) — a useful tool but limited to power-sector generation choices on a 10-year horizon. IGCEP can tell you what generation capacity to build next; it cannot tell you whether the cost-optimal pathway to 2050 favours renewables-plus-storage, nuclear, gas-with-CCS, or some mix.

Pak-IEM 2.0 spans the full energy economy — generation, transmission, end-use sectors (industry, transport, buildings, agriculture) — and lets the Power Division compare trade-offs between cost, investment requirements, emissions, and energy security in one consistent framework. That's the kind of analytical infrastructure Pakistan has lacked since the 1994 power policy era.

The drivers stress-testing the model

Pakistan's energy system is under simultaneous pressure from rapid population growth, urbanisation, rising cooling demand, transport-sector growth, and continued reliance on imported fossil fuels. The model's value is that it forces honest trade-offs between these — for example, showing how much faster renewables build-out has to run if Pakistan wants to electrify 30% of vehicles by 2030 without inflating peak fuel-cost adjustment on consumer bills.

Decarbonising the distribution side

The GTZ collaboration that produced Pak-IEM 2.0 explicitly extended into decarbonisation and digitisation of power distribution networks — the Disco-side reforms that constrain how much renewable capacity can actually be integrated. Without smart-grid and AMI rollout across NTDC and the Discos, the model's renewable trajectory cannot be physically delivered no matter what the optimisation says is cheapest.