After a conference held on wednesday at the frankfurt school of finance& management report presented by the UN environmental program UNEP, investment in renewable energies fell by 12 percent last year to 244 billion US dollars (just under 184 billion euros). After double-digit growth rates recently, this is the first minus since the financial crisis in 2009, when investments fell slightly by two percent.
The main reasons for this are uncertainties about demand policies in europe and the USA, as well as falling production costs for solar energy. But the volume of investment is still enormous, eight percent above the 2010 level, said silvia kreibiehl of the UNEP cooperation center at the frankfurt school. In fact, it was only in 2011 that more money was invested in the global energy transition.
From the experts’ point of view, the development in the emerging and developing countries is also positive. While industrialized countries invested 29 percent less ($132 billion), emerging and developing countries invested a record $112 billion (up 19 percent) in solar, biogas, wind turbines and small hydroelectric plants. This means that the sums are gradually converging. Five years ago, industrialized countries had invested more than two and a half times as much in this area; in the meantime, the lead has shrunk to 15 percent.
In china, the largest sums flowed into the expansion of renewable energies in 2012: the investment volume there rose by 22 percent to 67 billion US dollars – more than a quarter of the total global investment, according to the report "global trends in renewable energy investment". The USA follows far behind (36 billion, down 34 percent). In crisis-ridden europe, investment fell by around 40 percent in 2012 to 80 billion dollars. But this means that europe remains the region where the most money is invested in alternative energy sources worldwide.