The global energy transition isn’t waiting for peace. It isn’t waiting for stable governments, predictable supply chains, or the kinds of conditions Western analysts once insisted were prerequisites for large-scale renewable deployment. Across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, countries battered by conflict, sanctions, and chronic underdevelopment are installing solar panels, building wind farms, and restructuring their grids at a pace that would have seemed implausible five years ago.
And the numbers are staggering.
According to a detailed report from The Associated Press, renewable energy capacity additions worldwide hit a record in 2024, with developing and conflict-affected nations accounting for a growing share. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) found that global renewable power capacity grew by a record amount last year, with solar photovoltaic alone adding more capacity than any other source. But what’s most striking isn’t the aggregate figure — it’s where the growth is showing up.
Yemen. A country torn apart by nearly a decade of civil war, where the electrical grid has been functionally destroyed in many areas, has seen a quiet solar revolution unfold at the household and community level. The AP reports that solar panels have become the primary source of electricity for millions of Yemenis, not because of government policy or international aid programs, but because they’re simply the cheapest and most available option. When the grid collapses, you improvise. In Yemen, that improvisation looks like rooftop solar arrays cobbled together from Chinese-made panels shipped through whatever port is still operating.
It’s a pattern repeating across multiple conflict zones. In parts of Syria, Iraq, and Gaza, where infrastructure has been obliterated by years of bombardment, solar energy has emerged as the default — sometimes the only — power source for hospitals, schools, and homes. The economics are brutally simple: diesel generators require fuel, fuel requires supply lines, and supply lines require security. Solar panels, once installed, require none of those things.
This isn’t idealism. It’s survival math.
The broader trend extends well beyond war zones. Across sub-Saharan Africa, where grid connectivity remains among the lowest in the world, off-grid and mini-grid solar installations are proliferating. The International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook noted that Africa’s solar capacity has been growing at roughly 50% per year, albeit from a low base. Countries like Kenya, Nigeria, and Ethiopia are deploying solar at scale, driven by a combination of falling technology costs, growing demand from young and urbanizing populations, and — critically — the inability of centralized grid infrastructure to keep up.
Asia tells a similar story, though at far greater scale. India added more than 18 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2024, continuing its push to reach 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel power by 2030. Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines are all accelerating their renewable buildouts, driven partly by climate commitments but more immediately by surging electricity demand and the rising cost of imported fossil fuels. China, of course, remains the colossus — responsible for roughly 60% of all new renewable capacity installed globally last year, according to IRENA data.
But the story in the developing world is qualitatively different from what’s happening in Beijing or New Delhi. In many of the fastest-growing markets, the shift to renewables isn’t being orchestrated by central planners with five-year targets. It’s happening from the bottom up, driven by individuals, small businesses, and communities making rational economic decisions in the absence of reliable alternatives.
Consider Lebanon. The country’s state electricity utility, Électricité du Liban, has been in a state of managed collapse for years, providing only a few hours of power per day in many areas. Private diesel generators filled the gap for decades, run by a cartel of operators who charged exorbitant rates. Then solar got cheap enough. As the AP noted, Lebanese households and businesses have been installing solar systems at a remarkable clip, fundamentally altering the country’s energy mix without any coherent national strategy driving the change.
The geopolitical implications are significant and underappreciated.
For decades, energy dependence — particularly on oil and gas imports — has been a defining vulnerability for developing nations. It shapes trade balances, foreign policy, and domestic politics. Countries that can generate their own power from sunlight and wind reduce their exposure to commodity price shocks, supply disruptions, and the political leverage that fossil fuel exporters wield. This is especially relevant in the Middle East, where the irony is thick: oil-producing states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are among the most aggressive investors in solar and wind, precisely because they understand the strategic value of diversifying away from the resource that made them rich.
Saudi Arabia’s NEOM project and its broader Vision 2030 agenda include massive renewable energy targets. The UAE, which hosted COP28 in Dubai in late 2023, has committed to tripling its renewable capacity by 2030. These aren’t acts of environmental altruism. They’re hedges. Every barrel of oil not burned domestically for power generation is a barrel available for export at global market prices. The math works even if you’re skeptical about climate science.
So what’s actually enabling this shift in places where institutional capacity is weak, capital markets are thin, and political risk is high?
Three things, primarily. First, the sheer collapse in the cost of solar photovoltaic technology. The price of solar modules has fallen by more than 90% since 2010, and Chinese manufacturers — particularly companies like LONGi, JA Solar, and Trina Solar — have flooded global markets with panels so cheap that they’re accessible even in the poorest countries. A basic rooftop solar system that might have cost $10,000 a decade ago can now be assembled for a fraction of that.
Second, the rise of distributed energy models. Unlike coal or natural gas plants, which require massive upfront capital, complex supply chains, and extensive grid infrastructure, solar can be deployed at almost any scale. A single panel on a tin roof. A mini-grid serving a village of 200 people. A utility-scale farm powering an industrial zone. This modularity makes solar uniquely suited to environments where centralized infrastructure has failed or never existed.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, financing innovation. Development finance institutions like the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and various bilateral aid agencies have increasingly shifted their energy lending toward renewables. Pay-as-you-go solar models, pioneered by companies like M-KOPA in East Africa, allow customers to acquire solar home systems through small mobile money payments, effectively turning a capital expenditure into an operating expense. It’s microfinance meets energy access, and it works.
The challenges remain formidable, of course. Battery storage — essential for making intermittent solar and wind power reliable — is still expensive and difficult to deploy at scale in developing countries. Grid integration is a nightmare in places where the grid barely functions. Maintenance and technical capacity are chronic bottlenecks. And in active conflict zones, any infrastructure, including solar installations, is vulnerable to destruction.
There’s also a troubling equity dimension. The renewable energy boom in developing countries is overwhelmingly dependent on Chinese manufacturing. That creates a different kind of energy dependence — not on fuel, but on technology and supply chains controlled by a single country. If geopolitical tensions between China and the West escalate further, or if trade restrictions tighten, the flow of cheap solar panels to the world’s poorest markets could be disrupted. It’s a risk that few policymakers in these countries are adequately planning for.
And yet.
The momentum is undeniable. The AP’s reporting highlights a fundamental truth that much of the Western energy discourse misses: the clean energy transition is not primarily a story about wealthy countries installing sleek wind turbines off their coasts and arguing about permitting reform. It’s increasingly a story about the developing world — messy, unplanned, sometimes chaotic, but accelerating in ways that aggregate data alone can’t capture.
In Yemen, a father installs a solar panel because the grid hasn’t worked in three years and he needs to keep his children’s nebulizer running. In rural Kenya, a shopkeeper signs up for a pay-as-you-go solar kit so she can keep her phone charged and her mobile money business operating after dark. In Lebanon, a restaurant owner bolts panels to his roof because the diesel generator cartel is bleeding him dry. None of these people are thinking about Paris Agreement targets or net-zero pledges. They’re solving immediate, practical problems. And in doing so, they’re reshaping global energy markets from the ground up.
The scale of this bottom-up transformation is easy to miss if you’re focused on the headline numbers from China, Europe, and the United States. But the IEA and IRENA data consistently show that the fastest growth rates — not the largest absolute numbers, but the steepest curves — are in countries that rarely make the front pages of energy trade publications. That matters. Growth rates compound. And the countries building renewable capacity today, even from a low base, are laying the foundation for energy systems that will look radically different in a decade.
For investors, the implications are both promising and complicated. The opportunity set in developing-world renewables is enormous, but so are the risks — currency volatility, regulatory uncertainty, political instability, and the ever-present challenge of getting paid. Project finance structures that work in Germany or Texas don’t necessarily translate to markets where contract enforcement is spotty and sovereign credit ratings are junk.
Still, capital is flowing. Green bonds issued by developing nations have surged. Climate finance commitments from multilateral institutions, while still far short of what’s needed, are growing. And private equity firms specializing in emerging-market energy infrastructure are raising larger funds than ever before. The smart money sees what the data shows: this is where the growth is.
The world’s energy future isn’t being decided solely in corporate boardrooms in Houston or government ministries in Brussels. It’s being shaped on rooftops in Sana’a, in village markets in rural Nigeria, and in the bombed-out neighborhoods of Beirut. The transition is messy, uneven, and far from complete. But it’s happening. Faster than most expected. And in places that, until recently, almost nobody was watching.
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