Worldwide Global Clean Energy Investment StrongerBloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has reported that clean energy investment rallied 10% in the first quarter of 2014 (Q1’14) compared to the same period a year earlier, reaching a total of $47.7 billion.
Earlier this month that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the seventh edition of its Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment based on data provided by BNEF, showing that 2013 renewable energy investment had dropped by $35.1 billion. However, the prime factor behind the drop in 2013 investment wasn’t necessarily lack of interest, but rather placed at the feet of falling solar photovoltaic production costs. Stepping forward to Q1’14, Bloomberg highlighted small-scale solar in Japan and the US as accounting for 42% of the jump in investment, “as households and businesses … took advantage of the big falls that have taken place in the cost of photovoltaic systems over recent years”, complimenting 2013′s investment drop.
Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, commented: “It is too early to say definitively that 2013 was the low point for clean energy investment worldwide and that 2014 will show a rebound, but the first-quarter numbers are encouraging. “Two trends, in particular, are worth picking out,” Liebreich continued, noting that “the increasing share of small-scale solar in overall investment, following a 50%-plus improvement in PV’s levelised cost of electricity per MW over the last four years; and the geographical expansion of investment to more and more emerging economies. In Q1, we saw two of the top four asset finance deals happening in Indonesia and Kenya.”
cleantechnicaCO2-Free Study Finds Wind/Solar Power Cheaper Than Nuclear Or CCSAgora Energiewende this week released the results of a cost analysis of four different CO2-free power scenarios in Europe. Says Patrick Graichen, executive director of Agora:
Wind and solar systems will dominate the power system in increasingly more countries. The battle for the cheapest CO2-free power mix is decided. In the future wind and solar will play an ever greater role in countries across the world as a source of power.
The German “think-&-do-tank,” funded by the Mercator Foundation and European Climate Foundation, came to two conclusions:
New wind and solar can provide carbon-free power at up to 50% lower generation costs than new nuclear or carbon capture and storage.
A reliable power system based on wind and solar with natural gas backup is 20% cheaper than a system of new nuclear power stations combined with gas.
Considering two decades of plummeting costs for wind and photovoltaic power, Agora looked at how wind and solar systems now compare to other decarbonization technologies (nuclear power and carbon capture and storage). The company based its “conservative” conclusions on a look at current feed-in tariffs in Germany; the agreed Hinkley Point C (UK) strike price; and the latest cost estimates for CCS (likely low) from studies commissioned by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change in relation to the White Rose (coal) and Peterhead (gas) CCS plants, planned to be operational by 2020.
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