Analyst Insight: Natural Gas Generation in Emerging Economies

Reliable power is a precursor for the economic success of countries with low GDP—and especially critical as climate change drives up the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events in developing and developed countries alike. Although solar PV and other renewable technologies receive the most coverage, diesel gensets have long been the face of distributed gas. A variety of factors over the past decade—increasingly stringent environmental regulations and historically low natural gas (NG) costs—have shifted the market to NG-powered technologies. Because of environmental concerns, natural gas distributed generation (NGDG) is experiencing renewed interest: its enhanced capabilities can provide around-the-clock power to local facilities and the larger grid with lower emissions than diesel genset alternatives. 

The Middle East & Africa regions lack the developed world’s infrastructure for transporting NG to its destinations. Rising international demand and increasing potential for remote applications that further economic development necessitate secure pipelines and distribution networks across national boundaries. Insufficient infrastructure in emerging economies, however, complicates investment decisions. A coordinated effort among policymakers and NG stakeholders is crucial for attracting foreign investment for resource development. The present supply crisis requires governments, regulatory bodies, and oil & gas companies to carefully coordinate and implement their extraction efforts to benefit accelerating national NG economies. Until these projects come to fruition—in the mid-to-late 2020s, at the earliest—diesel will likely remain the technology of choice for emerging economies due to its reliability, low capital cost of deployments, and nascent national emissions regulations.

This Guidehouse Insights Analyst Insight provides an overview of the NGDG landscape in global emerging economies defined here as the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa regions. It includes data from the Natural Gas Distributed Generation Forecast published in the third quarter of 2022.