Investment records in renewable energy

Investments in renewable energy have reached an international record of 243 billion dollars in 2010. The latter was revealed by the latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance report, which offers a detailed geographical analysis of  financial flows and sectors they fund.
According to Michael Liebreich General Director of New Energy Finance, this is a "spectacular result", however the report “contains an important warning. Rather than a matter of time, the growth has been in fairly direct response to government incentives.”
The Bloomberg report reveals that growth in clean energy investments in the sector is five times more than in 2004, twice more than in 2006 and over 30% compared to 2009. This record finding is specifically characterized by the fact that funding for research and the development of new technologies increased from 15.8 billion dollars in 2009 to 21 billion last year.
According to the report, “new investments were mostly driven by projects in China and offshore wind and small-scale solar PV plants in Europe”. Most of the investments were made in Asian countries, and Beijing led the way, with an investment that last year hit $51.1 billion. Moreover, a significant contribution to the growth also came from the installation of photovoltaic rooftop panels and other small systems in Europe, particularly in Germany, but also in the United States, the Czech Republic and Italy. The investments for distributed energy production using small power plants have in fact grown by 91% in one year, reaching a total of 59.6 billion dollars.
Finally, Liebreich was cautiously optimistic when evaluating possible future scenarios: "We have been saying for some time that the world needs to reach a figure of 500 billion dollars per annum investment in clean energy if we are to see carbon emissions peak by 2020. What we are seeing in these figures for the first time is that we are half-way there.”