[Pops]

Now that Graeme is back and the Renewable Wall of Press Releases has been rebuilt, I was surprised to come across these 2 charts from euanmearns.com that show RE investment stalling out right at the time fracking got rolling






$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he $232 billion invested in renewables in 2013 was dwarfed by the $1.6 trillion total global energy investment in that year reported by IEA, and of the 235GW of new generation capacity installed globally in 2012 only 76GW was wind or solar, according to EIA and BP

[C8]

If technology makes fracking and renewables similar in price then folks will always go w/ fracking- the infrastructure is already built and there are no nimby battles over unsightly panels or windmills

[Ulenspiegel]

Pops,

what picture do you get when you display installed capacity as function of time, PV and wind are the most interesting.

A lower invested sum does not necessarily mean lower installed capacity.

Fracking does not affect generation of electricity in Europe, such an assumption is nonsense. And to make my point, it will not affect generation of electricity as NG from whatever source is not competitive, coal, PV and wind kill it.

The low NG price in the USA is the result of the fact that you do not have sufficniet export capacity, not true for Europe.

[Pops]

Uni, just pointing out the facts as they sit, pooh-pooh them as you will they are still the facts.

2 simple points, maybe 3
the amount of new investment in RE is stalled, in the EU especially, and globally is but a fraction of investment in FFs.
Yet PV and Wind are only 3.5% of total capacity to date
And the stall happened just as fracking took off

Not gonna get a RE-revolution without revolutionary investment

[ROCKMAN]

Such a blind eye to the obvious: can someone explain exactly where frac'd oil and any of the alts are competing directly against each other? Has the increase in wind power taken $1 away from the refiners of EFS oil used to make gasoline? Can anyone name one US fossil fuel burning power plant that has been replaced by any alt? Frac'ng the Marcellus has certainly put a lot of NG into the system. But where has any cheap source of NG inhibited an alt project? If it has then there's one simple answer: the alt wasn't economical. So is it that difficult to imagine folks not wanting to make uneconomical investments?

How about this as a possible reason: there is a finite amount of investments capital in the world. We had a lot of it going into the shale boom as well as the expansion of industries globally especially in China and India. We've also seen $TRILLIONS spent by govts on military conflicts.

Alt development had to compete with those other capex sinks and investments. The sinks were govt mandates and the investments had to compete on the basis of their potential returns. So maybe the answer is that simple: with the capital available the alts, in general, typically weren't worth a sh*t. LOL.

Remember one of the big alt successes in the US: Texas wind has seen huge investments during that time period. Enough capex invested to push Texas (as measured as a country by itself) to tie for #4 in the world in wind power. And it was achieved strictly on the basis of good business practices.

[Graeme]

This thread is really an offshoot of the RE and economic growth thread I started. Stalling in investment (topic of thread) has nothing to do with fracking as Rockman pointed out. This 2013 report by UNEP explains why. The following quotes are copied from the Key Findings:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')The main issue holding back investment last year was instability in the policy regime for renewable energy in important developed-economy markets.
Future investment is likely to coalesce in countries that can offer policies that command investor confidence, plus the need for extra generating capacity and strong renewable power resources.

The other major theme of 2012 was a further, significant reduction in the costs of solar photovoltaic technology. The levelised cost of generating a MWh
of electricity from PV was around one third lower last year than the 2011 average. This took smallscale residential PV power, in particular, much closer
to competitiveness.

The result was that, despite problems in former market hot-spots in southern Europe, the amount of PV capacity installed in 2012 was a record 30.5GW,
up from 2011’s 28.8GW. However this came at reduced cost, contributing to an 11% fall in overall solar investment last year, to $140 billion


Clean energy share prices had another poor year in 2012, the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, or NEX, slipping 6% while wider stock markets
gained. This followed a 40% plunge in the previous year. The NEX reached a low in late July some 78% below its record level reached in November 2007,
before beginning a rally that extended into 2013.

The main reasons for the further under-performance of renewable energy shares last year were severe distress in the manufacturing supply chain for
both wind and solar, caused by over-capacity; and investor unease about future prospects in the light of unhelpful policy moves in Europe and North
America.

[onlooker]

I would weigh in somewhere in the middle. Fracking has had an effect, in so much as without the boom , that would have attracted more investment in RE. But also true is that Renewables were never going to replace the humongous infrastructure of FF. That was a pipe dream. First to reiterate the inherent lack of concentrated energy also the less bang for the buck of RE and unreliability so this was always prohibitive roadblocks for large scale adoption of RE. Add to that the natural variability as some places just are not situated well to take advantage of wind or solar. Finally are the internal obstacles particularly in the US from the potent FF industry.

[Graeme]

I concede that fracking had some effect in the US during 2012-2014. This from the executive summary:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he main reason for the 12% decline in 2012 was investor concern over policies to support renewable energy in its longest-established markets, Europe
and the US. In part this was a case of uncertainty – developers, equity providers and lenders were unsure about whether commitments to subsidise renewable energy deployment would continue beyond scheduled expiry dates in countries like the US, the UK and Germany.

There was also negative impact on investment levels from other factors, notably pressure on utility balance sheets in some European countries, the
low natural gas price in the US (which reduced the value of power purchasing agreements available to generators, including wind developers), and
the poor performance, once again, of clean energy share prices. The latter factor hit public market investment in specialist renewable energy companies and made venture capital and private equity funds more hesitant about putting money into the sector.

[ennui2]

If Graeme is conceding some negativity, then the reality is far worse.

[Pops]

Come down off your hobby horses guys, your bias is showing, LOL. Google "fracking renewables investment" for 545k hits, here is the first one I got,

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he country’s embrace of natural gas means less love for wind and solar. New investments in renewable energy sources declined 5 percent in North America last year to $56 billion, the lowest since 2010, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. By comparison, North American oil and gas companies spent $168.2 billion on exploration and production last year, more than double 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
...
Hydraulic fracturing, the technical name for fracking, has helped open the money tap for gas and oil. Since 2012, investors added more than $2.3 billion to the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund, which tracks oil and gas companies. In the same period, investors withdrew $32.5 million from the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy Portfolio, the biggest exchange-traded fund tied to renewable-energy equities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“There’s absolutely no question that investors’ dollars have moved from one to the other,” said Bruce Jenkyn-Jones, a managing director at London-based Impax Asset Management Group Plc, which oversees about $4.2 billion

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'I') concede that fracking had some effect in the US during 2012-2014.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'T')his thread is really an offshoot of the RE and economic growth thread I started.

[Graeme]

Pops, Excuse me for being blunt but aren't you doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing? You are posting news articles and "appealing to authority". Of course there is a lot of new information being published in the media . That is what it is: NEWS. I try to cover a wide range of topics nearly on a daily basis. Your arguments against me are very weak. Yes fracking in the US has had an effect on shifting investment toward natural gas but that is not the main reason that investment has declined since 2010. I stated them above if you care to read. Do I need to repeat? NG has up until recently been cheaper but you should know that grid parity is spreading throughout the country so eventually it will be renewables that will kill fracking. The good residents of Georgetown Texas have recognized this and are acting accordingly. Here is some more news. You could of course choose to ignore it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ith demand for PV cells growing quickly, China--factory to the world--got into the game. Beginning around 2006, a boom in the Chinese PV industry massively expanded global production and drove prices down even further. Today China is a solar manufacturing giant, producing close to two thirds of the world's PV--more than the United States, Japan, and Germany combined.

The decline in PV panel prices over the decades is astonishing. In 1972, they cost over $74 per watt. The average price as of mid-2014 was less than 70¢ per watt--99 percent cheaper. (For reference, the typical U.S. rooftop system today has between 2 and 10 kilowatts of generating capacity. One kilowatt equals 1,000 watts.)

Around the world, solar installations are growing by leaps and bounds on residential and commercial rooftops and in solar farms, also called solar power plants or parks, that can cover thousands of acres. Between 2008 and 2013, as solar panel prices dropped by roughly two thirds, the PV installed worldwide skyrocketed from 16,000 to 139,000 megawatts. That is enough to power every home in Germany, a country with 83 million people. In its January 2014 solar outlook report, Deutsche Bank projected that 46,000 megawatts would be added to global PV capacity in 2014 and that new installations would jump to a record 56,000 megawatts in 2015.

The International Energy Agency in Paris, which is typically conservative in its renewable energy forecasts, has been revising its solar projections upward. As recently as 2011 it forecast 112,000 megawatts of solar generating capacity by 2015--a figure the world left far behind in 2013. The organization now projects that by 2018 the total will be 326,000 megawatts of generating capacity, but the world will likely come close to this in 2016.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'P')ops, Excuse me for being blunt but aren't you doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing?

[Graeme]

The answer to the thread question is an emphatic NO. I hoped that I did't have to repeat myself but in your case it appears that I have to. A simple google search can reveal:

Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2015

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ccording to UNEP's 9th "Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2015", prepared by the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance — the past year brought a rebound of green energy investments worldwide with a surge of a solid 17% to $270 Billion. Brushing aside the challenge of sharply lower crude oil prices this sudden increase reveresed the investment dip of the past two years and was mainly driven by investments in solar and wind energy.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'S')o why the big drop in RE investment even when oil prices were over $100/bbl?

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 't')he past year brought a rebound of green energy investments worldwide with a surge of a solid 17% to $270 Billion.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'A')h, good point. But if they are getting cheaper, why are they not even more competitive and growing even faster? As the deal gets better it seems like it would attract even more investment, not less.

[Graeme]

Pops, No it hasn't stalled. Your charts are from Bloomberg; mine are from the UNEP report, which offers more details. You don't quote UNEP. Investments for renewables for the entire year of 2014 went up 17%. Here are some of the key findings from the UNEP report:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')dditional highlights:

China saw by far the biggest renewable energy investments in 2014 — a record $83.3 billion, up 39% from 2013. The US was second at $38.3 billion, up 7% on the year but well below its all-time high reached in 2011. Third came Japan, at $35.7 billion, 10% higher than in 2013 and its biggest total ever.

A key feature of the 2014 result was the rapid expansion of renewables into new markets in developing countries. Investment in developing countries, at $131.3 billion, was up 36% on the previous year and came the closest ever to overhauling the total for developed economies, at $138.9 billion, up just 3% on the year. Additional to China, Brazil ($7.6 billion), India ($7.4 billion) and South Africa ($5.5 billion) were all in the top 10 of investing countries while more than $1 billion was invested in Indonesia, Chile, Mexico, Kenya and Turkey.

Wind, solar, biomass and waste-to-power, geothermal, small hydro and marine power contributed an estimated 9.1% of world electricity generation in 2014, compared to 8.5% in 2013. This would be equivalent to a saving of 1.3 gigatonnes of CO2 taking place as a result of the installed capacity of those renewable sources.

As in previous years, the market in 2014 was dominated by record investments in solar and wind, which accounted for 92% of overall investment in renewable power and fuels. Investment in solar jumped 29% to $149.6 billion, the second highest figure ever, while wind investment increased 11% to a record $99.5 billion. These expenditures added 49GW of wind capacity and 46GW of solar PV, both records.

Investment in Europe advanced less than 1% to $57.5 billion. There were seven billion-dollar-plus financings of offshore wind projects, boosting the investment totals for the Netherlands, the UK and Germany. These included, at the euro equivalent of $3.8 billion, the largest single renewable energy asset finance deal ever, outside large hydro – that of the 600MW Gemini project in Dutch waters.

[Subjectivist]

To me the real question is, with Fracking proving to be a financial black hole for the lower volume wells drilled in more marginal pockets of the formations where will the fracking investors turn? I am a huge fan of large scale Wind turbines and they were being built around here a few each year until Fracking sucked up all the investment money.

Will my beloved wind power get a second burst of investment from investors scared away from Fracking as the poorly positioned or unlucky companies start going bankrupt? Or will the Fracking investors just turn their funds loose in the rest of the Oil industry in refining, or shipping/pipeline/rail yard construction? Or will they go a completely unexpected direction and pour funding into Nuclear, or Hydroelectric, or Tidal, or something I have not thought of?