Clean Power for Growth

This RMI fact sheet argues that renewables and battery storage are now more effective than natural gas for supporting economic development and energy access in the Global South, offering superior reliability, deployment speed, and cost-effectiveness while avoiding the long-term financial and security risks associated with gas infrastructure.

• Renewables and battery storage can meet the three primary needs of economic development: reliability, speed of deployment, and cost-effectiveness. Examples include hybrid facilities in South Africa for emergency reliability, the grids of Sint Eustatius and Saba running entirely on renewables for a full day, and Ghana's plan to build only renewables through 2025. In terms of speed, a large-scale storage project in Australia was deployed in under 100 days in 2017, and Vietnam tripled its solar capacity in 2020 by installing over 6 GW.
• Renewables are increasingly the lowest-cost electricity source, even in gas-producing nations like Malaysia or importing islands like Jamaica. In India, a recent renewables auction for a hybrid plant set a world record for the lowest price, which was lower than the cost of coal.
• Overreliance on gas poses significant risks to emerging markets. Based on IEA World Energy Outlook 2021 data, a Net Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario compared to a business-as-usual Stated Policies (STEPS) scenario for 2030 suggests that the NZE path would result in average household energy spending being approximately 15% lower and the impact of global price volatility being 21% lower for consumers in emerging markets and developing economies.
• Investing in gas infrastructure, particularly LNG terminals which often cost $500 million or more, creates 'technology lock-in' and concentrates risk in a single commodity or supplier. IEA estimates suggest that by 2050, strategies prioritizing heavy gas use could expose approximately $140 billion per year of power sector gas use in developing economies to supply risks and price volatility caused by geopolitical unrest, facility failures, or extreme weather.
• RMI recommends that national energy decision makers abandon the legacy prioritization of "baseload" power stations and instead use modern planning and competitive procurement. They suggest prioritizing modular, flexible renewable investments over large, irreversible fossil resource bets and utilizing development funders to cover any near-term "green premium" for lower-risk renewable options.

APA

RMI (n.d.). Clean Power for Growth. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2021/11/clean_power_for_growth_fact_sheet.pdf

Chicago

RMI. Clean Power for Growth. n.d. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2021/11/clean_power_for_growth_fact_sheet.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Clean Power for Growth |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2021/11/clean_power_for_growth_fact_sheet.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmindclean, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Clean Power for Growth}}, institution = {RMI}, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2021/11/clean_power_for_growth_fact_sheet.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }