The slump in oil prices that’s brought upheaval and cost-cutting to the traditional energy industry spared renewables such as solar and wind, which raked in a record $329.3 billion of investment a year ago.
Advertisement
The rise came despite falling costs for new solar panels and a plunge in prices of fossil fuels, including a drop of 67 per cent dive in Brent crude prices over the past 18 months. Natural gas in the U.S. fell 48% on the Henry Hub index from $4.42 to $2.31 per million British Thermal Units.
“These figures are a stunning riposte to all those who expected clean energy investment to stall on falling oil and gas prices”, BNEF chairman Michel Liebreich said. “Wind and solar power are now being adopted in many developing countries as a natural and substantial part of the generation mix”, he said.
“And it is very hard to see these trends going backwards, in the light of December’s Paris Climate Agreement”, Liebreich added. This totalled $199bn in 2015, up 6% on the previous year. The 2015 figure for the North Sea is an estimate. These included the UK’s 336MW Galloper, with estimated costs of $2.3 billion and Germany’s 402MW Veja Mate, at $2.1 billion.
The picture is not all gloomy, however, with the capacity of new rooftop solar photovoltaic systems rising in 2015.
The largest biomass project funded was the $921-million, 330MW Klabin Ortiguera plant in Brazil, and the largest geothermal installation was the estimated $717-million, 170MW Guris Efeler in Turkey.
Last year’s investment growth appears surprising, given the renewable energy cuts since the last election.
According to Platts Renewable Power Tracker, combined wind and solar capacity in Europe’s five biggest markets – Germany, the UK, France, Spain and Italy – has reached 180 GW, generating more than 270 TWh of electricity in 2015. Venture capital and private equity investors pumped $6.1bn into specialist clean energy firms in 2015, up a healthy 27% on the 2014 total but still far below the $12.2bn peak of 2008. The two companies are expected to provide loans to project developers are comparatively chapter rates than banks.
Government and corporate research and development spending totalled $28.3 billion in 2015, up just 1%.
Solar PV investment leaped ahead of wind investments for the first time during the year due to a strong policy push for power from the sun.
As a result, Britain was by far Europe’s strongest market, despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s effort to roll back incentives for the industry.
“Investments in wind have stayed relatively flat at $4.1 billion in 2015, which is also the average achieved in the last three years”, the report quoted above said.
According to BNEF’s latest figures, in 2012 and 2013, global clean investment decreased to US$272 billion after the previous record of US$318 billion in 2011.
In India, funding for clean energy rose 23 percent to $10.9 billion, and new markets including Mexico, Chile and South Africa attracted tens of billions of dollars.
Advertisement
The US ranked second at $56 billion, marking an 8% year-on-year rise – the most since the era of the “green stimulus” policies in 2011. Once the world leader in new-energy spending, Europe’s investments have fallen off amid economic stagnation.
