People often focus on the environmental benefits of renewables, but they have another huge advantage - they can be used as decentralized energy sources. One benefit, you’re not at the mercy of price fixing by semi-monopolized corporations obsessed with increasing profits every quarter. Even better, you can break free from other people’s incompetence, corruption and inefficiency.

This seems to be what is happening in Pakistan, and it’s a hopeful lesson for many other parts of the world. Plagued by a corrupt increasingly dysfunctional traditional grid infrastructure many people are now able to bypass it entirely thanks to rooftop solar.