Clean energy investment not on track to avoid climate change

The world economic crisis has hit investment in clean energy and means its growth is no longer on track for the world to avert the worst impact of climate change, according to leading clean energy and carbon market analysts, New Energy Finance.

Presenting their Global Futures 2009 insights to the second New Energy Finance Summit on March 4th, NEF analysts say that although lower economic activity due to the financial crisis will reduce CO2 emissions, in the longer term the drying up of funding for lower-carbon energy solutions is likely to have far greater adverse impact on emissions.

Investment in clean energy – renewables, energy efficiency and carbon capture & storage – increased from $34bn in 2004 to around $150bn in each of 2007 and 2008. New Energy Finance’s latest Global Futures report demonstrates that investment needs to reach $500bn per annum by 2020 if CO2 emissions from the world’s energy system are to peak before 2020.

Scientific experts fear that continued growth of emissions beyond 2015, or 2020 at the latest, would create the strongest risks of severe and irreversible climate change. New Energy Finance analysis shows that a peak much before 2020 currently looks highly unlikely.

Global Futures 2009 estimates that the recession’s direct impact on CO2 emissions is likely to be moderate, reducing the total by around 1 Gtonne per year (3%), and certainly not enough to avert a continued upward trend.

EurekAlert