Pakistan’s power sector regulator has signed off on a $58 billion, 11-year investment plan that will reshape how the country generates and moves electricity through 2035 — but the approval came over the written objections of the regulator’s own board members.
The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) conditionally approved the Integrated System Plan (ISP) 2025 this week, built around the “Revised Base/Recommended Case” of the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP-2025), according to Dawn and ProPakistani. The plan excludes Battery Energy Storage Systems and a K-Electric transmission line that had originally been proposed for 2028, pending further review.
What the Plan Actually Buys
Of the roughly $58 billion total, $47.08 billion is earmarked for new generation capacity — 26,045 megawatts (MW) in total, made up of 17,485 MW of projects already committed and 8,560 MW of “optimized” additions, after accounting for 2,577 MW of retiring old plants. Another $10.65 billion goes to transmission infrastructure, split between $4.6 billion for projects already underway and $6.05 billion for new expansion. Net metering (rooftop solar feeding back into the grid) is projected to add a further 8,120 MW over the same period. By 2035, Pakistan’s total installed generation capacity is projected to reach 62,657 MW.
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total investment (2025-2035) | ~$58 billion |
| Generation capacity investment | $47.08 billion |
| New generation capacity added | 26,045 MW |
| — Already committed projects | 17,485 MW |
| — Newly optimized additions | 8,560 MW |
| Capacity being retired | 2,577 MW |
| Transmission investment | $10.65 billion |
| Ongoing/committed transmission projects | $4.6 billion |
| New transmission expansion | $6.05 billion |
| Net metering capacity projected | 8,120 MW |
| Total installed capacity by 2035 | 62,657 MW |
| Projected base tariff, 2035 | Rs 37.28/unit (up from Rs 34 in 2024-25) |
Why Nepra’s Own Members Objected
What makes this approval unusual is that all three Nepra members attached dissenting or separate advisory notes running over 12 pages combined, according to Dawn’s reporting. Their objections cover several fronts: disagreement over the grounds for including or excluding specific projects from the plan; concern that the process bypassed the Council of Common Interests, the constitutional forum meant to coordinate energy policy between the federal government and the provinces; and contradictory statements between the Independent System and Market Operator (ISMO) and the Power Planning and Monitoring Company over how the plan would actually affect consumer tariffs.
ISMO reportedly issued a disclaimer rejecting responsibility for the accuracy of the data underpinning its own tariff projections — a detail that fed directly into the board members’ concerns about the plan’s reliability.
The $900 million Battery Energy Storage Systems component was ultimately left out of this approval altogether, with members saying it lacked a comprehensive technical and economic justification before that kind of spending gets a green light.
What It Means for Consumers
The headline number for ordinary households is the tariff trajectory: the Power Planning and Monitoring Company’s own projections show the base electricity tariff climbing to Rs 37.28 per unit by 2035, up from Rs 34 per unit in 2024-25. That’s a relatively modest rise on paper for an 11-year window, but it lands at a time when Pakistani consumers are already sensitive to power costs — a sensitivity on full display just this week, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordering a two-hour cap on load-shedding nationwide after public complaints over outages, as Dawn reported separately.
The scale of the plan also reflects a broader balancing act facing Pakistan’s energy planners: retiring aging and expensive plants while adding new capacity, expanding the transmission grid so power actually reaches where it’s needed, and absorbing a fast-growing rooftop solar segment (net metering) without destabilizing the existing system — all while trying to keep tariffs from spiralling further for consumers already struggling with inflation.
Our Opinion
A $58 billion, decade-long commitment is exactly the kind of decision that should not be rushed through on a split vote, and the fact that all three Nepra members felt the need to file detailed dissenting notes is worth taking seriously rather than treating as procedural noise. Energy planning in Pakistan has a long history of being shaped more by short-term political pressure than by rigorous, transparent cost accounting, and the specific complaint here — that the Council of Common Interests, the constitutional body meant to keep the provinces in the loop on exactly this kind of decision, was bypassed — is a pattern worth watching rather than a one-off.
At the same time, the plan’s core logic (fewer expensive retiring plants, more committed capacity, a bigger transmission backbone) is broadly sound engineering, and Pakistan’s power sector has suffered for years from under-investment as much as from mismanagement. The real test will be whether the tariff numbers used to sell this plan to the public hold up better than ISMO’s own disclaimer suggests they might, and whether the excluded battery storage and K-Electric transmission questions get a fuller, transparent review rather than being quietly dropped.
