Data-Driven Insights into Sustainable Energy Transition across Diverse Climatic Conditions: Evidence from Pakistan’s Energy Sector

The comprehensive quest of a sustainable energy transition has suited a defining challenge, as nations seek the data-driven insights that concurrently address climate change, economic growth, and energy security issues. Energy sector in Pakistan like many other underdeveloped countries, currently faces similar challenges. Therefore, comprehensive data-driven research is required to find sustainable energy solutions. This research presents a method for gradual increase in variable renewable energy sources (VRES) and optimized retirement of fossil fuel-based power plants, finally to attain 100% integration of VRES till 2050 using H2RES modelling tool. The results demonstrate that 100% share of Pakistan's electricity demand can be met through energy storage technologies, flexibility options, endogenous investments into VRES, power to X technologies, etc. This research emphasizes the potential of H2RES model in achieving SGDs 7 and 13 targets as a template to provide a scalable framework for other developing nations facing similar power system issues, making it globally relevant.