The Global South Can Co-lead The Clean Energy Transition Through Storage, Digitalisation and Collaboration
The most important development challenges today are not confined to any single country. They cut across regions, manifesting differently depending on levels of system maturity. Power systems are a critical development imperative across the Global South, with regions at different stages of progress but facing a common constraint: delivering reliable, usable electricity at scale.
For instance, in much of Africa, the focus remains on expanding power access while ensuring that new connections translate into real economic activity. On the other hand, in Asia, especially in countries like India, where access is near universal, the challenge has shifted toward integrating renewables, strengthening grid performance, and improving reliability. This creates a clear opportunity for collaboration. Bringing these experiences together allows countries to leapfrog legacy system constraints, embedding flexibility, digitalisation, and storage earlier in the development cycle, rather than retrofitting them later.
Energy storage sits at the centre of this convergence, enabling power systems to move beyond access toward reliability, productivity, and growth. That reliability depends on smarter grids, digitalisation and decentralisation of power, turning intermittent generation into a predictable service. When power is reliable, renewables become the backbone of modern markets, driving enterprise, investment and jobs. With emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) projected to account for two-thirds of global energy demand by 2050, these regions have the opportunity to co-lead the transition.
To do so, there is a critical opportunity for the Global South to move from parallel efforts to shared systems, where collaboration reduces risk, accelerates learning, and builds markets that can scale.
Making storage and digital grids central to power markets across the Global South
Emerging economies can move quickly when the right mix of policy, finance, and technology is in place. But these conditions must be practical and aligned with local realities. South Africa’s Red Sands BESS is a crucial case study. The 153 MW / 612 MWh project is designed to ease grid congestion through load shifting and peak balancing, while supporting a resilient, decarbonised power sector. Similarly, Egypt’s Obelisk solar-plus-storage project, financed through a multilateral package, is expected to provide dispatchable energy and stabilise demand, using stored solar output. In Asia, Mongolia’s 50 MW / 200 MWh Baganuur battery station has already improved its grid resilience, helping offset a 200 MW winter deficit and advancing broader energy reform goals.
These examples show that when EMDEs embed storage and digitalisation into their power markets, through grid integration, market participation, and system optimisation, renewables shift from being an added cost to becoming a reliable, income-generating backbone for growth. As such, the South can adopt market design know-how from the North while exporting speed and inclusion – creating a two-way learning loop that accelerates scale.
Regulation can unlock ancillary services
The projects in South Africa, Egypt, and Mongolia also point to a less visible but equally important shift: how storage is integrated into power markets. This is already taking shape across the Global North. In Scotland, the Blackhillock project demonstrates how batteries stabilise the grid while earning revenue, while Norway’s ancillary service markets show how regulation can enable storage to stack multiple income streams. These lessons are critical for EMDEs because they show that storage must be treated as part of the market architecture, not just an add-on technology. Across much of the Global South, this market layer is nascent. Ancillary services are often unpriced or structured in ways that exclude storage, limiting their ability to participate fully in grid operations.
Regulatory reform is critical to changing this. By adapting policy frameworks to enable next-generation BESS infrastructure, power systems in the Global South can unlock the full value of ancillary services. In doing so, they move from deploying batteries as standalone assets to integrating them as core infrastructure within the grid.
South-South collaboration can enable EMDEs to co-lead the transition
South–South collaboration is the fastest and most effective route to scale. Partnerships rooted in shared realities are practical, cost-effective, and build local ownership. To facilitate these partnerships, concessional finance must be deployed only where it truly de-risks private capital.
For instance, India’s first commercial, standalone, utility-scale BESS project was delivered at a record 55% below the previous benchmark tariff, setting a new standard for BESS affordability in the country. Backed by catalytic capital from the Global Energy Alliance and partners, the project attracted strong private interest, proving how blended finance can make grid-scale storage commercially viable. Malawi’s newly commissioned Kanengo BESS facility is another critical case study, designed to stabilise a hydro-dependent grid and unlock new solar capacity, offering lessons for locally-led development that peers can replicate across EDMEs.
The BESS Consortium is a crucial example that demonstrates this. It is a coordinated effort to scale battery storage across emerging markets, with a target of deploying 5 GW of capacity across around 30 countries by 2030 and mobilising over $4 billion in blended finance. By aligning technical assistance and capital mobilisation, it is building a shared pipeline of bankable projects across different parts of the Global South.
With these steps, the energy transition in the Global South can move beyond isolated projects toward more coordinated, scalable systems that deliver reliable power. The focus is on reliability, the kind of electricity that supports businesses, strengthens institutions, and improves daily life. Storage and digital grids make this possible, turning clean energy into tangible gains for households, utilities, and national economies.
The Global South has already shown it can move with speed and inclusion. The task now is to combine these strengths with sound market design and catalytic finance, so emerging economies can co-lead the next phase of the clean energy transition, while anchoring long-term economic growth.