Fossil fuel electricity generation has peaked worldwide as emerging markets seize the opportunities of low-cost renewables. The emerging markets are key to the global energy transition, with 88% of the growth in electricity demand between 2019 and 2040 is expected to come from the emerging markets. If they do not leapfrog to renewables, there will be no global energy transition.
This report lays out the forces pushing emerging markets to leapfrog from the current system directly to modern renewables without passing through the intermediary stage of building up a huge electricity infrastructure based on fossil fuels. It provides an overview of the emerging market electricity leapfrog, demonstrating that emerging markets will not follow the same path to renewables as the developed markets. In addition, the report discusses how the developing countries are about to leapfrog fossil fuels in this decade to generate all the growth in their electricity supply from renewables. It also focuses on types of leapfrog, the different groups of emerging markets, how advanced the leapfrog is, the forces driving the leapfrog as well as the various barriers to change.