IMAGINE if all our energy was domestic. And cheap. Some days ago, I had written that even as our economy was growing, electricity demand from the grid was shrinking. Not only is this paradox real, there is an even more fundamental trend at work: solar energy is quietly replacing hydrocarbons as the world’s primary source of energy. A shift that has only just begun. This is a structural transition that will go all the way. Solar power will become the baseline and the cheapest source of energy. Period.

And this is only Act One. Soon this same structural transition will flow into transport as well. Electric vehicles will arrive slowly at first and then suddenly. This will double the demand for electricity and displace imported oil. Even more significantly, electric cars will become the largest distributed storage resource we have ever known. A parked car is a battery on wheels. It can soak up midday solar energy and discharge it during evening peaks. This is the shape of the energy future that is coming.

Solar as the primary energy, storage as an enabler and electrons flowing not just one way from distant plants, but sideways between neighbours, factories and feeders. The brave new world of distributed generation, local energy exchanges, and markets that clear at the level of a street, not a national grid control centre. Which brings us to the question: does the government have an energy vision? Not fragments. Not siloed targets. A total vision.

When I leaf through the official documents, I see two problems. The climate change ministry targets 60 per cent renewables and 30pc EVs by 2030. The NEV Policy backs EVs with subsidies. The Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan designed by NTDC still appears bound by legacy thermal contracts. It systematically undervalues solar in its least-cost models. The smaller problem is that these documents do not speak to each other. The bigger problem is the yawning gap between the future they describe and the one that is arriving.

An energy vision must answer interlocking questions.

A national energy vision is not a wish list. It must answer interlocking questions. What is the primary source? If solar is the cheapest energy in history, does our vision treat it as baseload or as an intermittent supplement? That choice determines everything: transmission, storage, pricing, the very shape of the grid.

How does storage change the equation? A grid with distributed storage; in homes, factories, and EVs is nothing like the present one. Once you have storage you are faced with decisions: when do you buy, when do you use, when do you sell and when do you hold. Where do markets form? If electrons flow sideways between neighbours, what rules enable that? Our regulations currently prohibit such transactions. A vision needs to answer whether such prohibition makes sense.

Energy, together with capital and labour, is fundamental to value creation and GDP. The goal of any energy vision must be brutally simple: cheap energy. Affordable enough that a factory competes globally and a household runs an air conditioner without choosing between comfort and food. On the other hand, we seem to be moving backwards. Nepra’s recent regulations ban local energy trading to protect the legacy of past contracts. This is the consequence of no one asking the foundational question: what is energy for?

Let me stake a path. Nepra could create regulatory sandboxes. Designating one feeder in each Disco’s territory to test local energy trading, distributed storage and EV-grid integration under real conditions. Publish the rules, invite innovators and let pilots succ­eed or fail on their merits. But designation alone is not enough. Discos are large, risk-averse institutions with little incentive to support innovation. Therefore, make the pilot programmes part of each utility’s performance mandate. Embed a dedicated team in every Disco to bring three successful pilots to fruition within a defined period. Tie their performance to clear KPIs.

A hundred concept papers cannot accomplish what one successful pilot can. This is how investment and innovation enter a sector that has known neither for too long. And once the pilots prove what works, we can turn to the deeper question: what kind of grid operator can take these lessons to scale?

We have been unsuccessfully trying to privatise these ramshackle distribution companies for two decades. Now we have another way to think about how to do this.

First design, then implement is a luxury of slower times. Today, vision and execution must run in parallel; start imagining the destination even as we take the first steps towards it. The pilots are those steps. The vision is the horizon. We need both, and we need them now.

The writer is a business strategist and entrepreneur.

moazzamhusain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2026