Clean tech investments in 2011 dominated by solar and wind
Global Clean Energy Investments by region 2011 (source: PEW Environmental, report)
Alexander Richter
23 Apr 2012
While there has been an increase in global clean tech investments, the main focus seems to have been on solar and wind, with only a margin of investments seen by other renewables, so a recent report by PEW Environmental Group and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The recent report on “Who’s winning the clean energy race?” by PEW Environmental Group and Bloomberg New Energy Finance was published earlier this month. The report looks at key financial, investment and technological trends in 20ö11 related to the clean energy economy of G-20 members.
The report describes an increase of clean energy investment by 6.5% to $263 billion.
The report combined regions into three different groups: Europe, Middle East and Africa as group number one, Asia/ Oceania as number two and the Americas as number three. Despite an large increase over the last two years, the Americas is trailing by far the other two groups. While Europe, the Middle East and Africa saw an investment of about $100 billion, and Asia/ Oceania saw about $78 billion, the Americas are trailing far behind with an overall clean tech investment of just beyond $60 billion.
Countries leading in investments into clean energy technolgy are the U.S., China, Germany, Italy, India, UK, Japan, Spain and Brazil. It is interesting to see that the majority of all clean tech investment in the U.S. has gone to Solar and only a small portion of that into wind. China on the other hand has spent the majority of its investment into wind.
Generally it can be seen that the majority of all clean tech investment has gone into solar power, followed by wind. While efficiency and low carbon tech/ services have seen some investment and so have biofuels, other renewables are only a marginal fraction of all clean tech investment.
The report also looks at stimulus funding and the bleak outlook for support funding for clean energy programs in the coming years. The report expects the funding to dramatically decrease. While it was about $70 billion in 2010, $40 billion in 2011, it is expected to go down to $35 billion in 2012 and then to about $10 billion 2013 and 1014 (each year).
See the full report “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race? 2011 Edition” of the PEW Charitable Trust (created in cooperation with Bloomberg New Energy Finance)
