Paris, France – High fossil fuel prices, increasing government support for clean energy technologies, and the threat of climate change have combined to fuel soaring investment in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries, according to a trend analysis from the United Nations’ Environment Programme (UNEP).

The agency’s latest report shows that investment capital flowing into renewable energy climbed from $80 billion in 2005 to a record $100 billion in 2006. The renewable energy sector’s growth “although still volatile … is showing no sign of abating,” predicts UNEP.

The report offers a host of reasons behind and insights into what it calls “the world’s newest gold rush”, where investors poured $71 billion into companies and new sector opportunities in 2006, a 43% jump from 2005. The trend is expected to continue in 2007 where experts predict investments will exceed $85 billion this year.

In addition to the $71 billion, about $30 billion entered the sector in 2006 via mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and asset refinancing. This buy-out activity, largely rewarded the sector’s pioneers, implies deeper, more liquid markets, a sign the sector is shedding its niche market image, according to the report.

While renewable sources today produce about 2% of the world’s energy, they now account for about 18% of world investment in power generation, with wind generation at the investment forefront. Solar and bio-fuel energy technologies grew even more quickly than wind, but from a smaller base.

Significantly, UNEP reports that renewables now compete head-on with coal and gas in terms of new installed generating capacity and the portion of world energy produced from renewable sources is sure to rise substantially as the tens of billions of new investment dollars bear fruit.

Says UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner: “One of the new and fundamental messages of this report is that renewable energies are no longer subject to the vagaries of rising and falling oil prices - they are becoming generating systems of choice for increasing numbers of power companies, communities and countries irrespective of the costs of fossil fuels.”

With investments rising from both public and private sources, it is evident that the global financial community feels current and predicted market conditions make renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies an attractive opportunity.

Another key message from the report is that the industry is no longer solely dominated by industrialized nations. Close to 10 per cent of investments are in China with around a fifth of the total in the developing world.

Apart from a range of global concerns – primarily climate change, increasing energy demand and energy security – the report also credits the rise to the November 2006 U.S. mid-term elections, which confirmed renewable energy as “a mainstream issue,” moving it up the political agenda.

The persistently high price of oil - averaging more than $60 a barrel in 2006 – also contributed to the rise, although there are signs that the sector is more independent of the price of oil, notes UNEP. “Growing consumer awareness of renewable energy and energy efficiency - and their longer term potential for cheaper energy, and not just greener energy - has become another fundamental driver,” it says. “Most importantly governments and politicians are introducing legislation and support mechanisms to enable the sector’s development.”

The report’s other key points and conclusions note:

• Renewable energy and efficiency markets are growing more global and enjoying easier access to capital markets;

  
  

• Capital is coming from the venture investment community, the stock markets and internal refinancing, signalling the sector’s shift to mainstream status;

  
  

• Risk and uncertainly can be reduced through diversification across technologies and geography;

  
  

• Energy efficiency is a significant but largely invisible market, attracting increasing attention as investors realize its important role in meeting rising energy demand;

  
  

• Capital investors are now more closely aligned with industry proponents in their views of expected growth.

Wind, solar, biofuels attract greatest investment dollars

Renewable energy sectors attracting the highest investment levels are wind, solar and biofuels, “reflecting technology maturity, policy incentives and investor appetite,” according to the report, adding that the Toronto Stock Exchange’s NEX Index of clean energy stocks increased by 64% in the 15 months to April.

Stock market investments in technology development, commercialization and manufacturing firms leapt 141% in 2006 compared with 2005, while venture capital and private equity investments jumped 167%. Financings of energy generation assets and capacity grew at “a more sedate 22.9%,” the analysis says.

Most asset financing deals were in the relatively mature wind sector, with biofuels (which experienced a surge of interest in 2006) in second place. Venture capital and private equity investors in 2006, meanwhile, poured $2.3 billion into biofuels, $1.4 billion into solar and $1.3 billion in wind, much of it to increase manufacturing capacity.

Around 40% of the capital invested in solar went towards new technology development. In biofuels, the proportion was about 20%, reflecting a surging corn-based ethanol industry in the U.S., as well as research into second generation biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol.

Renewable energy investment is almost evenly split geographically between United States and Europe. U.S. companies receive more technology and private investment, with high profile investment interest shown in biofuels during 2006 by entrepreneurs such as Vinod Khosla, Bill Gates and Richard Branson.

Europe’s publicly quoted companies attracted the most public stock market investment dollars: $5.7 billion compared to $3.5 billion in the U.S. This reflects strong government support for renewable energy in Europe as well as its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent development of an emissions trading scheme.

The European markets’ relative maturity also helps explain its dominance of merger and acquisition activity in 2006, with deals worth more than $20 billion in 2006 compared with $8.8 billion in the U.S., many of the corporate acquisitions being made by investors from developing countries, notably India.

Comparing the renewable energy and dotcom booms, the report says the former is “underpinned by real demand and growing regulatory support (which the dotcom boom did not enjoy), considerable tangible asset backing, and increasing revenues.”

Most energy efficiency investment has been in early-stage funding. Venture capital and private equity investment rose 54% between 2005 and 2006 to $1.1 billion. Some merger and acquisition activity also occurred in the energy efficiency industry, notably the Australian Bayard group’s $705 million acquisition of US smart-metering company Cellnet in December.

Among other insights:

• Investment in sustainable energy is still mostly in OECD countries, with the US and EU together accounting for more than 70% in 2006. However, investment in developing countries is growing quickly: 21% of the global total in 2006 occurred in developing countries, compared with 15% in 2004;

  
  

• A healthy 9% of global investment occurred in China, helped by significant asset financing activity in wind and biomass as well as the waste sectors. Investments in China came from across the spectrum, from venture capital through to public markets, “reflecting the country’s increasingly prominent position in renewable energy”;

  
  

• India lagged a little behind China but was the largest buyer of companies abroad in 2006, most of them in the more established European markets;

  
  

• Latin America took 5% of global investment, most of which financed Brazilian bio-ethanol plants;

  
  

• Sub-Saharan Africa notably lagged behind other regions;

  
  

• Global government and corporate research and development spending rose 25% to $16.3 billion;

  
  

• Investments in small-scale projects rose 33% from an estimated $7 billion in 2005 to $9.3 billion in 2006.

Small-scale projects attract growing interest, driven partly by opportunities in developing countries, which stand to benefit most from small-scale installations (e.g. solar roof panels and micro turbines).

With respect to the energy efficiency sector, the investment trends are harder to identify but the impacts of improving energy efficiency can be valued economically, notes Virginia Sonntag-O’Brien of UNEP’s Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative (SEFI). Investments in supply side and demand side efficiency have been helping decrease global energy intensity, which on average has been dropping 1% to 1.5% per year.

Since 1990, energy efficiency has met one-half of all new demand for worldwide energy services. These savings - 3 billion tonnes of oil equivalent - have a value of $6 trillion if an average oil price of $27 is assumed. The challenge is to accelerate energy intensity improvement to levels of 2% or above, which compounded to 2030 would mean a 61% improvement from today.

• Read Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2007 here.

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For More Information: United Nations Environment Programme