On January 19, Bloomberg New Energy Finance released a report on the renewable energy investment of 2010. The report contained many encouraging facts:
- $243 billion in total investment
- Small-scale project investment up 91%
- Venture capital investment up 29% from 2009
- Solar power saw a 49% increase in investment
- Wind power saw a 31% increase in investment
These figures are great news for renewable energy, but Bloomberg also reports that most of the growth came from China and European markets. The report states that recent growth “has been in fairly direct response to government intervention, whether in the form of cheap debt in China, sweet off‐take deals for European offshore wind, feed‐in tariffs for solar or a regulatory push for smart grids. The industry needs to continue to drive down its costs and reduce its reliance on this sort of support.” So while renewable energy in the US failed to make headlines in 2010, opportunities to do so remain.
In addition to the raw investment figures, Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg pointed out that “We have been saying for some time the world needs to reach a figure of $500bn per annum investment in clean energy if we are to see carbon emissions peak by 2020. What we are seeing in these figures for the first time is that we are half‐way there, and it is very good news.”
Read the press release of the report at EERE News.
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