The massive wind farms and solar installations of Europe or North America don’t fool when it comes to the question of who is the world leader in clean energy investment, because the winner is China.
For the second year, an annual Pew Charitable Trusts report, Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?, shows that China is the world leader in clean energy investment.
Bloomberg newsagency reports China’s $54 billion in investments in renewable energy in 2013 is well above the total US investment of $36.7 billion.
“No other clean energy market in the world is operating at that scale,” Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew’s clean energy program, said during a teleconference, referring to China.
The report comes a week after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the second part to its fifth assessment report.
That report states unequivocally that people will have to adapt to a world in which human fossil fuel emissions have caused the climate to change, threatening lives across the globe as temperatures and seas rise and extreme weather becomes more frequent.
Developing renewable energy is seen as one of the primary ways to reduce humans’ impact on the climate.
The Pew report says China’s efforts to slash poverty, expand economic development and solve its air pollution problems had driven the country to invest heavily in clean energy.
Though renewable energy market share is on the rise globally, the report says that overall worldwide renewable energy investment has been declining for two straight years.
Investments totalled $254 billion last year, a decline of 11 per cent from 2012 and 20 per cent from 2011 when investments peaked at $318 billion.
Bloomberg reports that whereas China installed 14 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity from wind farms and 12GW of solar power generating capacity last year, the US installed less than 1GW of wind power after a tax incentive for the wind industry expired.
The US installed a record 4.3GW of solar generation capacity in 2013 according to the report.
“Globally, we were second for wind and third for solar investment,” Ms Cuttino said.
Ethan Zwindler, head of policy for Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), said during the teleconference that 2012 was a record year for US wind power installation ahead of the expiration of the Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit, or PTC, passed in 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“2013 fell over 90 per cent to less than 1GW,” he said.
“Roughly two years of US wind-build got crammed into one, which was 2012.”
There was likely to be a resurgence in wind farms coming online in the US in 2014, many of which were under construction last year and will benefit from the PTC, Mr Zwindler said.
“The PTC still does very much matter to the US wind industry,” he said.
Another important finding in the report is that for the first time, solar power installations eclipsed wind farm construction globally last year.
“One-third of all solar on the planet was installed last year,” Ms Cuttino said.
“Deployment of solar was up 29 per cent, because falling prices are really driving technology and deployments around the world.”
Mr Zwindler said the solar and wind power industries worldwide are in a transition period as subsidies for renewable energy were scaled back, especially in Germany and Italy.
However, he is confident renewable energy will be able to compete in the future with few subsidies.
“It does not take place in all places at the same time,” he said.
“If you’re in a sunny part of the world with high electricity prices, putting solar on your roof clearly can make more sense.”
