Latest / Not Another Energy Podcast / Surviving Your Electric Bill: What Pakistan Can Teach Us All
Transcript
- speaker-0: to your new favorite show, not another energy podcast. I'm Bethany. speaker-1: I'm Teresa. speaker-2: And I'm Zhan. speaker-0: And together, we're wait, you're not bloom advisory partners. We, ladies and gentlemen, wonderful listeners, we have our very first guest. Let's give it up for Zishan. Why don't you I know I'm so excited. Yes, very first guest out of the gate. Couldn't be more thrilled to have you. Introduce yourself to the to the listeners out there. speaker-2: So my name is Zhan. I'm a filmmaker, turn turned into energy content producer, I would say. And I run a series called What's Next? ⁓ the series is about what's going to happen in the energy and its future. And this series is about talking to people who are working in the energy sector, but like talking about their niche because it's such a big sector. People have different kinds of narratives. and all like corporate media to hyperscalers to everybody have their own story ⁓ but they dominate the bigger story but we want I because of this we wanna tap into individual story and what they think about it. So that's that's the game of the po ⁓ my speaker-0: Yes, and you came to us because Teresa was just a guest on what's next. So that episode will be out soon, I believe. I did see the promo for it. ⁓ and I do have got a a little bit of beef with you, Z Sean. Okay, because here's here's the problem. Here's the problem. Teresa refuses to do video for our I I personally think give the people what they want and we should do video. And she is resisted, resisted, resisted. How did you get her to do video for what what did do you d did you blackmail her? speaker-1: Super charming. He's super charming. speaker-0: Yeah. You're saying I'm not charming. ⁓ speaker-2: I think it's my smile. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: Kudos to you. This will be audio only until I can find something to hold over Teresa's head and blackmail her myself into doing video. But yes, Teresa Teresa was a guest on what's next. And through that conversation, she you know, wanted to invite you on to be our first guest. So so Teresa, you kinda want to tee up what you guys were talking about and what got you so fired up and and why we're all here today. speaker-1: I I really do. So, Zhan, I know when we were just discussing things other than the fact that I hate video and you talked me into it, we were talking about some of your background and how you really got interested in energy and you told me the most amazing story about how solar is changing an entire country. And I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your background and solar and how that all sort of has come together. speaker-2: Sure. I'll start from my background. And growing up in Pakistan. ⁓ so all my life I lived in Pakistan and growing up we always have this crisis of not having electricity, ⁓ enough electricity. There was times when there was like eight hours or ten hours of ⁓ energy outbreak, like all the time. And it's it used to be regular or growing up. And then when I came to America that was the first time I've seen like, ⁓ wow. There's no we call it load shading because there is no There's always like a problem in the load on the grid in Pakistan. And remember, Pakistan is one of the biggest countries in the world, especially global south, which is also affected by the climate change, right? Yeah. We have seen the biggest floods, and that we don't have anything in in contribution to climate change. We have like one percent, less than one percent in total global emissions in terms of compared to all of the world. And then still we are affected by it in terms of air pollution and everything else. ⁓ the AQI is really, really bad. If you go in Pakistan in December, we we c we call it smog and we saw those N ninety five mosques in twenty nineteen, before even COVID hit hit to the country. speaker-1: You were ready to go 'cause you already were yeah. speaker-2: Yeah, it was it was there. speaker-0: There's been a lot of dialogue. There's been a lot of dialogue about two the countries that are contributing to climate change the least are the most impacted by it. So seems like that that's what's playing out in Pakistan, yeah. speaker-2: It's very very Yes. So in twenty twenty two there was a ⁓ mi biggest amount of flood and ⁓ this was the first time and I was here in New York doing my grad school and ⁓ I had no plans to like read about climate change to be very honest. I was trying to be an artist and a filmmaker and I'm like, ⁓ I'll do my exhibitions and all that stuff. So I'm like, what happened? Like my parents are calling me and they're like, ⁓ we lost our crops and I'm like and I'm seeing the news and this was the first time I really felt frustrated. Like Into the core of my body, other than like the heartbreaks that you have in like romantic heartbreaks. This was like the first time you get feel like that frustration. Yeah. ⁓ where you cannot do anything. So I kept like researching about what's going to happen and all that thing, and there's like 1700 people died in a month, 30 billion dollar loss. This was the major flood in the history of Pakistan, like 70 years. And at that point, when I started reading about it, there was no there was this. solar was like very like it the solar was not a big part of the energy production at that point, right? We were getting we were leaning hard on imported coal and gas and when ⁓ global prices sparked our bills with also sparked with them. Like for example I remember I was pulling out numbers in the morning and then the grid tariff in Pakistan in twenty fifteen was nine rupees per unit and those spiked up in forty four rupees per unit, that's like the five time of increase. speaker-1: Nine to forty-four? speaker-2: Nine to forty-four and it is the craziest thing. We were paying more money than European and American markets. Like my pay speaker-1: Money, less reliability 'cause when you guys said load shutting, it's basically the whole grid shuts down, not just one person at a time. And you have coal and natural gas, which is exasperating the the flooding and other issues. That's crazy. speaker-2: Yes, and the biggest part is government is the basically the energy producer. So government of Pakistan has these co d did these contracts with these we call it IPPs. ⁓ they're the ones ⁓ basically I will tell you the whole story later, but like that's how it is that they you have a contract which is bound for ten, twenty years. Whatever the price changes, you have to pay it ⁓ as a government. So what happened the the The story is very interesting. So here's the part which makes this story different from any other country's transition, let's say people are talking about clean and ⁓ like we wanna save the climate and o everything, but there was no g government in Pakistan. No big national solar program, no prime minister like standing up and announcing a green revolution. Yeah. No Paris Agreement. Nothing like that. speaker-1: Who are like, I'm sick of this, I'm gonna do it myself. Yeah. speaker-2: Yes, yes. That is called the millions of like ordinary people, like households, shopkeepers, factory owners, looking at the their electricity bills and deciding on their own, like the Chinese market is cheaper than they I mean they were not dumping, we were we were buying cheap elec cheap solar because there was a need for it and we got all that and everyday people. It's not like government started importing. Everyday people. So at the at the scale of what Next is honestly like happened like in this three, four years, last three, four years, is honestly hard to believe. Because in 2023, Pakistan imported like seven and a half gigawatts of solar panel. In 2024, that number nearly doubled, ⁓ like 17 gigawatt, and it's going up. And about like three to four years or four five years, I'm maybe confusing the numbers, Pakistan imported between forty-five and fifty big gigawatt, forty-five to fifty gigawatts of solar panels. Wow. And this speaker-1: And this is all still just people like I'm going to do it myself. Still no government mandates, just you know, I th I always butcher this quote, but it's if you can't change the world you can change yourself, right? Yes. ⁓ speaker-2: No no no no. speaker-0: Well no, I w I was actually gonna ask that same thing. So this is operating outside of the government, outside of the IPPs now and and maybe this is coming up later, but you know, how did the government respond to this? I mean, 'cause we know what utilities in the United States do when you try to bring that kind of stuff in. What was it like, you know, for for the residents of Pakistan that were trying to stand this up? speaker-2: So I I the the this story happened because th then we basically built the sec so our gr we kind of imported almost of like half of our grid capacity in terms of solar. Wow. So solar went up. So for example Pakistan is a hot country, right? And you saw the peak of from seven AM, let's say six AM, seven AM when there is a solar on the knee rooftop till two PM or three PM the so the the peak from the grid is down anywhere you see, all the graphs you see. And the because th they were not getting the solar that they were get the the solar was generating electricity from the gra ⁓ from the rooftop and they were not taking grid electricity. But the problem was the f there was fixed costs that you had to pay. Like we were getting taxed from the government. So government is government had no policy. It there is There is it's still there is a still so much going on, ⁓ which I can explain where Okay. So by the end of twenty twenty four the government is estimated that their cost shifting had pushed about like five hundred sixty three million dollars of extra burden onto like non solar consumers. But basically these are the people who don't have the solar. You could get that. ⁓ speaker-0: Don't worry about it. speaker-2: I I put it in the on the thing, but like okay. So what government did is basically they increased the rates of ⁓ electricity costs and people are not not buying it because if I'm cutting down my rates that I am generating and then government is trying to increase the rates because they have to pay those IPPs, I'm not going to take it. So there was a lot of you know speaker-1: It's the old cost shifting. Yeah. I you gave me bad service at really high rates. I took care of it myself. Go fuck yourself. That's kind of what they're saying, right? speaker-2: Yes. Yes. And the solar industry all honestly pushed really hard. The government basically is saying that now there there are two c okay so I'll I'll give you a little bit more depth in these things. So people who could afford let's say more money and they could they they were starting to do i installation of solars, but there are still a lot of people who cannot like convert all of their house to the to the solar, right? And in Pakistan in if you so we call it protected customers. For example I'll give you an example. So if you burn two hundred units Your bill will be like to a lower rate, even if you live in a bigger house. Because if you have a solar panel now and you're then you cut down your consumption to 200 units, your bill is cheaper. But you if you can afford only like one or two solar panels and you're you cannot afford all of them, your bill is if you jump more than 200 in the especially in the summertime when you're running the ACs and everything, it's hot, it's 40. Celsius, then even if you're poor, you're going to pay more because government is taxing over 200 unit bracket. speaker-1: So everybody wanted to control but that now that control is creating this wealth disparity on who's paying for what. speaker-2: Yes. Interesting. It is very crazy because now it to be ⁓ for indust so government has more electricity right now. That's crazy. Like in three years in Pakistan, government has access capacity which they wanna sell and they have paid more money in terms of just fixed costs rather than buying the electricity from these IPPs. ⁓ I can I don't have it the exact number, but I've researched it somewhere. I don't I can't find it on my map. speaker-0: Okay, we can find speaker-1: Yeah. Well we can always add ⁓ to the the show notes so that everybody can see them too. speaker-2: Yes. speaker-1: It's interesting this this is sort of a a model of all the debates that we're having here in the States where there's this idea of if everybody goes behind the meter and controls themselves who pays for the rest of the grid? Or certain utilities, I'm looking at Georgia Power, built this huge nuke plant. If nobody's taking from it, who pays for it? So you know, it's it I think it goes back and forth with it all comes back to the same thing, which is then you better do a better job of providing reliable service if you don't want people to leave you. speaker-2: Yes. It is That's the ⁓ most important thing now because now people are taking the the their destiny in their hands. They're like, ⁓ we wanna be in charge of this. Yes. And solar, especially like in terms of Iran war, you have seen petrol prices go up. And because that also affects our some of our power plants. ⁓ and gas and coal, because we ⁓ still run on those things back home. But the because we have the access solar, we were good with it. We Only price increase was the petrol like the gas, we call it in America. But there was no increase in the in this the electricity because we had we were kind of saved in some shape or form. So government did two things in 2026. Basically, they were like so there there is net metering system basically. Government installed these meters. Basically, they're if you're giving back to the government, then you know you get money back and all of that. They changed that rules. So So because of the older rule you get ⁓ your solar investment back in like two to five years, right? Depending on the the model that you've set up on your roof. Now they are doing it for ten to twelve years because government is like we need to pay. speaker-1: We need to make it a little more expensive. Yes, yes. I love the part though that there you know, I always like like the side impacts and I love that Pakistan was sort of like, Okay, well there's a war in Iran, but we're pretty good because we don't necessarily need all these things for our energy infrastructure. We got that covered. speaker-2: Yes. Yes. So in in Pakistan th they recently introduced a thing called C T B C ⁓ because we have electricity, more electricity. So there's a second bigger kind of a reform that they're doing. It's kind of in a testing level. One of the most people haven't heard about it. Basically it's called competitive it's called competitive trading bilateral contracts market. speaker-1: ⁓ my gosh. Leave it to energy people to come up with like the worst acronyms. speaker-2: Yes. And ⁓ what it does basically is end the government's monopoly as a single buyer of electricity. So they are testing it right now. speaker-1: Dream! What? No more monopolies? speaker-2: Yeah, yeah, they're trying. But I don't know if it works or not. So what's going to happen in this is like for the first time they're like basically large industrial users will be able to buy power directly from the producer. So it's kind of a fancy platform. Yes. speaker-1: Market, yeah. It's amazing. speaker-2: where you can bid if your usage is ⁓ more than one megawatt, you can go and bid it basically. So cutting out the government as a middleman entirely, they will pay a wheeling charge, to just get into that and to use the existing grid infrastructure. But otherwise it's kind of a direct deal between the producer and the the people who are like industrial consumers. speaker-1: Yes. Yeah. The Indiana has like a version of this too. If you're a big commercial customer, you can take directly from a generator at the more wholesale level of the grid. So I love it. So I love that Pakistan isn't running away and saying nope monopolize. We we're having this wealth disparity. Instead they're like leaning into like let's get to the other side as fast as possible that 'cause that's where the fix is. speaker-0: Well and I feel like they kinda had no choice because I feel like this you know, this whole solar revolution was sort of built up and it got so big that really they had to address it in a in a different way altogether. speaker-2: ⁓ yeah. I think it's very completely like different way that we are dealing. And we didn't like our government and c or like people who control the money in Pakistan, like here in America, like four hundred families. We also have four hundred families. Definitely smaller. We don't have four hundred billionaires over there. speaker-1: Still the same impact, right? The majority of wealth is centered with a certain group of people. Yeah. speaker-2: Yes. Yes. And what I think is Pakistan built like one of the biggest solar or energy revolution. It's completely by accident and need. Honestly, from the bottom up. Not just by like from the top down. Government didn't want to do it. I if they wanted to do it, they could have done it before. Because Chinese cheap solar was there. But like there was such a big need that household by household, basically people trying to survive their own electricity bill and the gu basically and the government has nothing like they they didn't offer anything but once they start like opened up the imports we got all the things and it's it's so funny and crazy that my ⁓ in our neighborhood the old refrigerator electrician the people who used to repair refrigerator and AC and electric stuff they all left their jobs and they became solar electrician. So they are the ones who are basically redefining in a year or two because there's more money in solar. So everybody In Pakistan, we are we are bigger we imported more solar than the whole continent of Africa did in a in a year. We did that in Pakistan. We are like 25 countries in the world who have been importing the most solar in the world. And the now the government is like saying, don't do it. Because you know, they're making the price increase. Yeah. But they're they're changing the policies and everything, but like people still want to do it. There's getting they're getting a lot of pushback because it's a political issue now for Pakistanis. Because like if your electricity is cheaper because everything else is so big right now, the inflation is at forty percent. Same thing happening in America, everywhere else in the world, that government is really under pressure because if they don't let these solar ⁓ installations to happen, people will like get them. But what they did on this side is then now they're we call it the gas, like the we call gas the gas when w you burned it on your basically burner. Like you make food on that. Natural gas. We are loadshedding that now. So yeah. In pot. speaker-1: Yep, yep. Natural gas. Interesting. I love how you put it that you know people don't need to survive their electric bills. That that that's the place that they got to and now they're they're controlling it. It's created new jobs. It's doing all the things that you should be supporting as a government. But the flip side is now the government's sort of stepping in and trying to slow down what they should be pushing faster. But I'm never gonna forget that. I'm gonna use this line again. Surviving your electric bill. What a great way to put it. speaker-2: Yeah, thank you. speaker-0: I actually think that's what I'm gonna name this episode, surviving your electric bill. Because yeah, nobody should have to do that. And I I wanna thank you so much, Season, for coming on. I found this discussion endlessly fascinating. I think poor Teresa had to hold her tongue. She probably wanted to ask you five hundred more questions. So we might have to have an episode two and invite you to come back again. speaker-1: Yes, yes. And if you wanna hear more from Zishan, d you don't even just have to listen to mine, but w his what n what's next podcast is amazing. It's just cool little stories about what's happening in the energy space. speaker-0: Yeah, and I will definitely link to them in the show notes. And I think what's next is what happens when a New York film major suddenly starts to get interested in energy and starts telling amazing energy stories. Is that kind of your ⁓ your transition there? Yeah. Well I'm so glad you did it. Honestly, can't wait to hear Teresa's episode and all the episodes. Definitely make sure you check them out. Listeners, we've come to the end of our first guest episode. Thank you so much for joining us. Once again, I'm Bethany. speaker-1: I'm Teresa. speaker-2: I'm Zha. speaker-0: of be a part of Bloom Advisory Partners, but we sure were glad to have them with us today. Make sure you tune in next week, guys. And remember, energy is never just about energy. That's a wrap.