What will future household energy consumption in Pakistan look like? Challenges in accessing advanced energy sources due to the energy transition in rural and urban households

Clean energy transition in Pakistan’s residential sector is crucial, as one-third of energy consumption remains based on biomass fuel. This study develops a time-series end-use energy balance table (EBT) for rural and urban households in Pakistan for each service type from 1999 to 2020. We also forecast future household EBT up to 2060 under the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. We find that total per capita energy consumption (PEC) in 2020 was 1.09 times larger than in 1999, while rural total PEC remained 1.39–1.54 times higher than in urban areas throughout the same period. Rural households primarily use traditional biomass fuels, whereas urban households predominantly consume gas and electricity. Cooking accounts for over 75% of total residential energy consumption. The PEC of advanced energy in urban areas is highly correlated with socioeconomic factors such as economic growth, urbanization, and energy prices; however, this correlation is weaker in rural areas. The energy transition is expected to be twice as fast in urban areas as in rural areas by 2060. We find that the gap in total PEC between rural and urban areas will narrow from 1.39 times in 2020 to 1.10 times by 2060, but access to advanced energy sources will still be limited in rural areas. Total household energy consumption is expected to be more than triple from 1896 petajoules (PJ) in 2020 to 5,680 PJ in 2060. The provision of electricity and gas supply remains a policy challenge to achieve energy transition, even in the BAU scenario by 2060.