Renewable Energy and Developing Nations

There was a time when statements about development and energy were looked at from different perspectives but in the last few decades, the developing nations have been showing potential for renewable energy.

The Western world has industrialized over 200 years enjoyed enormous benefits from fossil fuels. The transition to a carbon-based economy liberated economies from age-old Malthusian constraints with select countries representing the worldwide population, burning fossil fuels enabled an era of explosive growth, introducing dramatic improvements in productivity, income, wealth, and living standards.

By tracing international financial flows to developing countries, the new SDG7 indicator aims to reinforce international cooperation and promote investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology by 2030. Despite recent fluctuations, the long-term trend for investment keeps increasing and will reach USD 20 billion annually within the coming years.

Between 2000 and 2017, total investment to developing countries for clean and renewable energy reached a cumulative sum of USD 138.9 billion. It has continued to grow since 2010, from USD 10.0 billion to USD 21.4 billion in 2017. The large-scale investments in hydropower vary considerably from year to year. However, the broad trend shows a fifteen-fold increase between 2000–2017, reflecting an increased focus of development aid on clean and renewable energy.

Developing countries built more clean energy than fossil-fuelled, power-generating capacity for the second year in a row, as reported by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). This momentum, however, is being challenged by a growing and potentially toxic industrial waste problem.

Developing countries are, in some ways, well-positioned to profit from these technological advances. They’re generally gifted with naturally distributed renewable energy sources, notably sunshine; they often lack significant legacy energy systems; they’re likely to experience rapid increases in energy demand; and that they are often characterized by relatively large and dispersed rural populations with limited or no access to electricity or other modern sorts of energy. For these reasons, many developing countries have a big opportunity to advance towards energy technologies…