Solar energy in emerging markets: insights from London Climate Action Week

Published 22 July, 2026 Event commentary

On 22 June 2026, CETEx and Energiva Ventures jointly hosted an invite-only roundtable titled Scaling up Solar Energy in Emerging Markets. The event brought together stakeholders from India, Indonesia, Mexico and other emerging markets to discuss the state of solar power in terms of both adoption and domestic production. The event aimed to highlight the experiences of different emerging economies to examine successful approaches in accelerating the uptake of solar power and expanding domestic solar manufacturing capacity.

First, Energiva showcased India’s rooftop solar (RTS) programme and its support towards its implementation through the City Accelerator Programme (CAP). The CAP is an initiative under the RTS scheme aimed at providing technical assistance to municipal governments and distribution companies (DISCOMs), capacity building, institutional strengthening and supporting locally led (city-level) policy frameworks.

Second, the Industrial Policy Lab presented progress in Indonesia’s solar and battery manufacturing industry, exploring the state of the domestic market, regulatory reforms to bolster the industry over time and how tools such as local content requirements could be adapted for greater effectiveness.

This was followed by a discussion that contextualised the progress against the country’s 100GW solar programme. The discussion followed the issues emerging economies face on renewable energy, looking at the complete value chain, from manufacturing to adoption, and solutions to overcome the barriers.

Key lessons learned include:

When discussing the uptake of solar, or any renewable energy technology, the issues can be broken down by lack of capital at the macro-level as well as the lack of awareness and capacity at the micro-level. Both these issues must be dealt with in parallel.
Early coordination is crucial. This coordination should be at all levels of governance with all stakeholders involved (local governments, consumers, financial providers, technicians, DISCOMs, manufacturers and so on).
Subsidies can be a means for facilitating longer-term energy security. When discussing energy transition and government support, the need for subsidies is often highlighted. Given the limited fiscal space, subsidies can be justified in the emerging economy context by their importance for long-term energy security. Subsidising RTS uptake helps avoid long-term dependence on imported fuels, which leaves emerging economies vulnerable to global energy price shocks. Similarly, investing in solar manufacturing helps avoid overdependence on imported panels and diversify economic dependence away from commodities, freeing up fiscal space in the future.
Manufacturing is especially beneficial for countries with greater quantities of raw materials and critical mineral deposits, which can be tapped into, with gradual and incremental increases in manufacturing capacity.
Instruments to encourage industrial upgrading, such as local content requirements, can be complemented with other time-bound instruments and sunset clauses to encourage competitiveness and domestic production capacity that is resilient within global markets.
DISCOMs with weak financial health would not be affected by loss of subsidised electricity consumers (as in India’s case). Various models, working across regions (within India and other emerging economies), were highlighted: including net-metering, utility-led aggregation and digitalisation.