The latest BNEF report on world clean energy investment shows investment declining 12% for the first half of 2020. With the continuing coronavirus epidemic it's likely that the second half will be no better. This article summarizes the report. This continues the stagnant level of clean energy investment that has persisted since 2011. As the graph shows, a trend in recent years has been an overall increase in wind energy investment and a decline in solar energy investment. Also costs have fallen and the same dollars are buying more generation capacity.
As we have covered in prior blog posts, the generation purchased with this level of investment, while substantial, is insufficient to have a meaningful effect on CO2 emissions before 2050. This stagnant level of investment despite falling costs of generation clearly demonstrates that there is no market force driving growing investment and the market is still propped up by subsidies. Subsidies are fickle and each major geography has waxed and waned with markets declining and growing in a way that has coincidentally maintained a fairly constant level of investment worldwide.
The hard truth that current wind and solar are not succeeding and will not succeed is still in complete denial from academics and environmentalists whose overwhelming desire for a solution blinds them to the plain evidence of failure that this stagnant investment illustrates.
By Edmund Kelly
As we have covered in prior blog posts, the generation purchased with this level of investment, while substantial, is insufficient to have a meaningful effect on CO2 emissions before 2050. This stagnant level of investment despite falling costs of generation clearly demonstrates that there is no market force driving growing investment and the market is still propped up by subsidies. Subsidies are fickle and each major geography has waxed and waned with markets declining and growing in a way that has coincidentally maintained a fairly constant level of investment worldwide.
The hard truth that current wind and solar are not succeeding and will not succeed is still in complete denial from academics and environmentalists whose overwhelming desire for a solution blinds them to the plain evidence of failure that this stagnant investment illustrates.
By Edmund Kelly
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