"Global renewable deployment is growing but remains deeply uneven." Analyse this with reference to energy justice and climate finance.

The world added 692 GW of renewable capacity in 2025, reaching 5,149 GW [1]. Yet deployment follows cheap capital more than unmet need, so its unevenness is both an energy-justice and a climate-finance failure.

Uneven growth: the pattern

• Scale: capacity grew 15.5%, with solar and wind forming nearly 97% of additions [1].
• Concentration: Asia took 74.2% of additions [1]; China alone added 440.1 GW, nearly two-thirds of the world total [2].
• Base effect: Africa grew 15.9%, faster than the world, yet added only 11.3 GW, about 1.6% of the total [1]. Growth rates hide absolute gaps.
• Not destiny: developing India reached 300.50 GW of non-fossil capacity, including nuclear, by July 2026 [3].

Energy justice: who benefits

• Distributive gap: over 560 million of the 655 million people without electricity live in Sub-Saharan Africa [4], yet Africa received under 2% of new capacity.
• Capacity is not access: gigawatts added elsewhere connect no unserved household; SDG 7 is the real test [4].
• Access-first response: Mission 300 aims to connect 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030 [5].

Climate finance: why the gap persists

• Investment gap: Africa has 20% of the world's population but only 2% of clean energy investment [6].
• Cost of capital: utility-scale clean projects in Africa pay at least two to three times the financing costs of advanced economies and China [7]. Renewables' upfront costs make this decisive.
• Global commitment: COP29 set at least USD 300 billion yearly by 2035, led by developed countries, reaffirming Paris Agreement Article 9; a wider call seeks USD 1.3 trillion [8].
• Limitation: a collective total does not by itself steer money to low-deployment regions.
• Corrective: USD 28 billion yearly in concessional capital could mobilise USD 90 billion of private investment in Africa by 2030 [7].

Renewable growth is real, but its geography reflects access to affordable capital rather than need. Concessional finance that lowers borrowing costs, judged by connections as well as gigawatts, can align the two. Only then will the transition deliver SDG 7 and the climate equity promised at Paris.