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Like many emerging economies, Bangladesh and Vietnam share a thirst for electricity. Powered by rapid economic growth, the former expects demand for electricity to jump 250% by 2040, while the latter will see more than a doubling of its demand in a decade, increases that dwarf the typical annual changes in advanced economies like the U.S. Both countries share something else in common: Despite being small contributors to worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, each nation sees climate change as a threat to its population and prosperity.

“We have an energy crisis,” said Rafał Kasprów, CEO of Poland’s Synthos Green Energy (SGE), last Thursday in Washington, D.C. “The solution we need,” he said, is innovative technology — “and we already have it: SMRs.” Kasprów was speaking at an event to celebrate the signing of a new $400 million technical collaboration agreement to advance the development and deployment of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 small modular nuclear reactor.

For decades, the blazing plumes of oil-site gas flares have featured in fossil-fuel news reports and dystopias like Blade Runner — emblems of the massive economic waste and carbon emissions most assume are just costs of doing business.