Beyond the Nameplate: What Renewable Capacity Targets Do and Do Not Buy in Developing Economies

Installed renewable capacity is the leading indicator of energy-transition efforts, yet its conversion into realized generation is rarely estimated directly. This study estimates that rate in a panel of 118 developing and emerging economies over 2001–2023, treating proportional conversion, a unit coefficient, as a testable benchmark. In the preferred two-way fixed-effects specification, non-hydro renewable generation per person rises with one-year-lagged capacity per person, both in log(1 + x) form, at a rate of 1.042 (standard error, SE = 0.029), statistically indistinguishable from proportional conversion (test of unit coefficient, p = 0.148); the pure log–log elasticity among positive observations is lower, 0.845 (SE = 0.039). The estimate is stable under country-specific trends (0.924, SE = 0.046) and fixed technology shares (1.025, SE = 0.029), and a distributed lag in exact first differences shows that generation responds mainly to the current and previous year’s capacity changes, with a cumulative response of 1.070 (SE = 0.044). Higher lagged capacity is associated with a 3.630 percentage-point rise in the renewable output share (SE = 0.813) and a 3.258 percentage-point fall in the fossil share (SE = 0.771). Governance interactions are small and fragile under multiple-testing correction, and Poisson and pure log–log checks address the units-sensitivity of log(1 + x) estimates. Conditional on lag structure and functional form, deployment statistics are informative about realized generation and fossil substitution, whereas broader institutional and development gains remain unconfirmed.