The UN-sponsored Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA) found 13 developing nations in Africa, Asia and Southern America had tremendous scope for building solar and wind power infrastructures.

Solar and wind sources currently supply around 50,000MW globally but the SWERA report indicates developing nations could increase this amount exponentially, China alone having the ability to support over 100,000MW of renewable energy.

“If you look at China and Brazil, they’re going to be manufacturing the renewable plants and there are big economic benefits in that,” said SWERA project manager Tom Hamlin.

“And there are broad economic benefits for the smaller countries. Instead of always importing petroleum, they would have domestic resources so they would save on the costs and risks of having petroleum prices fluctuate wildly.”