Total world investment in renewables was $285.9 billion, according to the authors of the Renewables 2016 Global Status Report from REN21, a group that tracks renewable energy developments.
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Developing countries spent more on renewable power than rich ones for the first time a year ago, driving the fastest increase in sources of green energy on record, a study said Wednesday. The Renewables 2016 Global Status Report reveals that renewables are now firmly established as competitive, mainstream sources of energy in many countries around the world. While trends are generally positive, the report highlights several challenges that remain to be addressed if governments are to fulfill their commitments to achieve a global transition away from fossil fuels.
“I’ve been working in this sector for 20 years and the economic case is now fully there”, said Christine Lins, the executive secretary of REN21: “The fact that we had 147GW of capacity, mainly of wind and solar is a clear indication that these technologies are cost competitive (with fossil fuels)”.
It was the second year in a row that renewable energy outpaced fossil fuels.
She said poorer countries were increasingly turning to renewable energy partly because it was now so “cost-effective”.
Lins continued: “For every dollar spent boosting renewables, almost four dollars were spent to maintain our dependence on fossil fuels”. Not including hydropower, China tops the list for renewable energy capacity, followed by the United States, Germany, Japan, and India.
Investment in renewable energy from so-called developing countries exceeded investments from developed countries for the first time ever in 2015, according to a report from the Renewable Energy Policy network for the 21st Century (REN21).
It notes, too, that global investment in renewables has increased.
Australia’s investment in large-scale renewable energy all but halted in the past three years after the Abbott government began a review of the industry and later cut the Renewable Energy Target for 2020 of 41,000 GW-hours to 33,000 GW-hours with Labor’s support. “Other developing countries investing more than $500m (about £345m) in renewables in 2015 included Morocco, Uruguay, the Philippines, Pakistan and Honduras”, the REN21 report said.
“The most significant decrease was seen in Europe (down 21 per cent to $48.8bn), despite the region’s record year of financing for offshore wind power ($17 billion, up 11 per cent from 2014)”.
The renewable energy industry has been facing a major headwind for two years now. Moreover, investment in renewable energy has been weighted increasingly towards wind and solar power. In the U.S., more people now work in the solar industry than in oil and gas extraction.
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