Indian Lenders To Boost Renewable Energy Finance By $15 Billion

The latest figures confirm the global clean energy sector continued to defy predictions that historically low fossil fuel prices across the oil, coal and gas markets would undermine investment in renewables, electric vehicles, and other clean technologies.

“These figures are a stunning riposte to all those who expected clean energy investment to stall on falling oil and gas prices”, said Michael Liebreich, founder of the London-based research arm of Bloomberg LP.

Wind turbines stand behind a solar power park at Werder, Germany.

The record number is even more important in light of the continuous, further decline of solar photovoltaics costs, which means that more capacity could be installed for the same price.

Fears that low oil prices will continue into 2016 have knocked confidence among oil companies, delaying $380 billion worth of investment in upstream projects, according to analysis by industry consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd. on January 12.

However, these cuts will take time to filter through as projects can take several years from inception to completion.

The gap between investment in wind and solar in the United Kingdom has also widened. Germany invested $10.6bn, down 42% on a move to less generous support for solar and, in wind, uncertainty about how a new auction system will work from 2017. “It is conditional on costs coming down, and I think that will happen, but it’s hard to say how many will be supported”.

China was again far and away the largest low-carbon energy investor in 2015, increasing financing by by 17% to $110.5 billion, as the government spurred on wind and solar development to meet rising electricity demand and limit reliance on coal-fired power. That’s nearly double the $56 billion invested in the USA, which was second in the BNEF rankings.

The “Clean & Green” fund is only one of the market’s many “I believe” investment that allow investors to avoid hundreds of dollars in trading fees and invest in hundreds of stocks they believe in all at once by buying a single ETF.

Australia’s performance contrasted with the global picture, with worldwide investment in clean energy reaching a record $US329.3 billion previous year, up 4 per cent on 2014. Brazil was an outlier, where investments dropped 10 percent to $7.5 billion. “They can be produced more cheaply than often high wholesale power prices”.

At the Paris climate conference, India announced its intention to raise the share of non-fossil fuel power capacity in the country’s power mix to 40 percent by 2030 from the current level of 30 percent. “And above all, they can be built very quickly to meet unfulfilled demand for electricity”.

According to preliminary estimates, new small-scale solar PV totalled 827 megawatts, up from 792MW a year earlier.

This boom made 2015 a record-breaking year for installation of renewable power capacity, with 64 gigawatts (GW) of wind and 57 GW of solar photovoltaic commissioned during the year – an increase of almost 30% over the previous year.

Total renewable investment for the year hit US$329 billion, up US$13 billion on the previous year. (NASDAQ: GLBL). The public markets accounted for $14.4 billion of 2015’s total. Renewables investment in Britain rose 24 percent to a record $23.4 billion from 2014, according to BNEF.