PAKISTAN’S announcement that it would allocate 2,000 megawatts of electricity for Bitcoin mining and AI data centres has triggered a predictable debate: can the country afford to supply that much power? It is an important question, but not the most useful one. Bitcoin mining, AI training and real-time digital services do not exactly place identical demands on the electricity system.
Pakistan’s electricity challenge is about more than the amount of generation capacity available. It is about when and where electricity is needed, whether the network can deliver it reliably, and how that demand is managed during periods of stress. During the hottest months, cooling demand pushes the grid towards its limits. At other times, generation capacity remains underused. But nationally available capacity does not automatically translate into reliable electricity at the location and hour a data centre requires it. Transmission constraints, substation capacity and power quality matter just as much as the headline allocation.
The better question is this: how should this new demand be designed and integrated into the electricity system from the outset?
Data centres are not ordinary consumers. Their location, cooling systems, computing equipment and grid connections are decided before construction begins. That gives Pakistan a rare opportunity to shape a major new category of demand before it becomes embedded in the system. But doing so requires recognising that not all computing demand is the same. Some services are highly sensitive to delay. User-facing AI applications, financial platforms and communications systems may require continuous availability. Their loads cannot simply be switched off whenever the grid comes under pressure. Other workloads may offer more flexibility. Certain forms of data processing and model training can be scheduled within broader time windows, distributed across locations or paused at planned checkpoints, depending on how the systems are designed.
Pakistan’s electricity challenge is about more than the amount of generation capacity available.
Where genuine flexibility exists, it can be reflected in tariffs and connection agreements. Eligible workloads could be scheduled outside critical peak hours. Operators could provide more accurate demand forecasts, limit abrupt changes in consumption, or use storage to reduce pressure on the network during short periods of stress. This is not a hypothetical mechanism. The UN referred to Ireland as a “cautionary tale” when the country faced a severe energy crisis because data centres consume roughly 23 per cent of the nation’s total electricity — nearly rivalling the power used by all residential homes combined. Ireland’s grid operator now assesses new data centre connections in constrained areas partly on whether the applicant can prove its demand is flexible, and writes that commitment directly into the connection agreement rather than leaving it voluntary. Pakistan can build the same discipline in from the start, instead of retrofitting it once the grid is already under strain, the way Ireland had to.
Pakistan does not need to begin from scratch. The country already has a cloud-governance and accreditation framework. The Cloud Office is mandated to set standards and compliance requirements for cloud service providers, while the existing accreditation criteria cover security, service availability, resilient power infrastructure and recognised data centre certification.
What the framework does not yet fully address is how efficiently these facilities use electricity and water, or how they interact with the wider power system.
The Ministry of IT & Telecom’s own concept note identifies this gap. It notes that the current framework does not explicitly prescribe standards for energy management, environmental performance, power usage effectiveness, water usage effectiveness or renewable energy integration. It proposes a national sustainability framework for data centres to fill that gap. That is the right direction. But the framework should go one step further by connecting digital-infrastructure planning with power sector planning.
Large facilities should provide credible forecasts of their electricity and water demand. Projects should be assessed against local network capacity, not simply national generation figures. Energy and water performance should be measured consistently. And tariffs should reward verified efficiency and flexibility rather than merely offering cheap electricity to large consumers.
This is not anti-investment. Serious data centre investors already consider reliable power, cooling, environmental compliance and long-term energy security when choosing markets. Good standards are not a barrier to investment, but rather, a part of a credible investment proposition. The first generation of AI infrastructure will shape the one that follows. Early decisions on location, efficiency and grid connection will become precedents that are harder to change once major investments have been made.
Pakistan does not need to wait for its grid to buckle before it asks this question, the way Ireland did. It has the chance to design demand before it hits the grid, not renegotiate it after the fact.
The writer is director, Awareness and Outreach, National Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority.
Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2026
