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Utility-scale renewable electricity generation is essential to decarbonisation as well as to ensuring affordable and secure electricity supplies around the world. Yet thus far there has been limited critical thinking dedicated to the complexities behind the finance and ownership of this new infrastructure and how national and local stakeholders should participate in and benefit from its development, particularly in contexts of high inequality in low- and middle-income countries. As the global renewable energy industry becomes increasingly consolidated and financialised, evidence from a number of countries suggests that despite the pro-environmental outcomes of utility-scale renewable electricity generation, the processes and institutions that procure and finance it have often failed to include or benefit individuals and communities living in the national and local vicinity. This paper therefore sets two key competing …