Max Pichon | business@ben-global.com
Over a trillion dollars have been invested in renewable energy, energy efficiency and smart energy technologies since records began in 2004.
“Annual clean energy investment has risen nearly five-fold, from US$52b ($51.08b) in 2004 to $243b last year, a compound annual growth rate of 29%,” says a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report.
BNEF notes, "2004 was an important year in the clean energy sector: it was the year oil prices began their rise from $20-30 per barrel to the current range around $100; it was also the year in which Germany introduced its groundbreaking feed-in tariff rules, which have been widely copied around the world."
"Like the recent birth of the world's seven billionth baby, it is impossible to pinpoint with certainty the one trillionth dollar of investment. However it is almost certain it took place during the last two weeks of November, probably somewhere in the developing world."
Among the investments that were made during this period, any of which might have been the trillionth dollar, were the following:
- Rhodia Energy secured the Brazilian real equivalent of $60.5m in debt for the 77MW expansion of its biomass co-generation plant in Paraiso.
- China Huadian Corporation financed a 48MW wind farm in Fujian province.
- Marena Renovables Capital obtained debt from the Inter-American Development Bank towards the development of the 396MW La Ventosa wind farm in Mexico.
- Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy got debt financing for the development of phase one of the 125MW Ouarzazate solar thermal project
BNEF expects 2011 to be another record year, driven by US solar thermal projects, large European offshore wind financings, continued high levels of activity in China and Germany, and India's new national renewable energy programs.
Company CEO Michael Liebreich said the figures should serve as a message to negotiators in Durban to "stop obsessing about a binding deal to cap carbon emissions, and to think much harder about how to speed up investment in the solutions" to climate change.
"The trillionth-dollar milestone shows that the world is not waiting for a deal on climate in order to start turning the super-tanker away from fossil fuels," he said.
"Another five years of investment growth at the same compound rates and the world will have broken the back of emissions growth."
China is rapidly emerging as the key growth market for clean energy, with new figures this week from the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggesting the country will install 180GW of wind and solar power capacity by 2020, equal to the capacity built by the rest of the world over the past 40 years.
The IEA predicts China's electricity demand will grow by an average of 4% per year to reach 9,000 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2035, which represents a tripling of its 2009 demand and equates to 18 times that of France.
“While the percentage of China's energy mix coming from renewable sources is expected to remain below that of the US, the EU and India as late as 2035, the rapid growth in renewable energy deployment will prove globally significant, Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, told Reuters.
"It will bring down the cost of wind turbines and PV solar modules significantly," Birol said. "This is good news for China and the rest of the world."
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