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U.N.: clean energy revolution is here

Terry Macalister

A gold rush of new investment into renewable power over the past 18 months has led the United Nations to conclude that clean energy could provide almost a quarter of the world’s electricity by 2030.

More than $70 billion was injected into wind and solar power and biofuels in 2006, 43 per cent more than the preceding year. Sustainable energy accounts for only 2 per cent of the world’s total but the U.N. says 18 per cent of all power plants under construction are in this sector.

The findings, outlined in the Global Trends in Sustainable Development annual review, represent a challenge to the received wisdom among energy experts that green power is likely to play only a marginal part in the energy mix until at least the second half of the century.

The International Energy Agency in Paris, which recently argued that renewables could account for barely 9 per cent of power production by 2030, said the figures needed further examination. Greenpeace described them as “great news — if true”.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. environment programme, said in a foreword that bankers and other fund managers have ignored Government dithering over climate change and started to shift the balance of the sector by pumping money into technologies that tackle global warming. “The increasing investments in clean energy also point to deeper change — a tipping point where sustainable energy technology is the fundamental component of the global energy system. As Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment suggests, that point may already be here.”

Including money spent on company mergers and acquisitions, the amount injected into renewables last year was $100 billion. On the basis of the investment levels so far, new investment will rise to $85 billion this year. —

Guardian Newspapers Limited London 2007

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