Massive Green Energy Investment

Worldwide “green energy” investments continued their rapid climb in popularity during 2007.

It does not take a degree in economics to appreciate the reasons behind the mushrooming clean energy boom.

Oil seems to now have no ceiling, currently moving step by step to $150 a barrel, with the Saudi oil minister predicting $250 as a price on the financial horizon.

Governments, big business and the public seem to have now totally opened their eyes to the potential threats that ‘dirty’ energy use poses to the planet.

So now, in what may turn out to be the next industrial revolution, ‘Green’ power is universally seen as the only way forward.

As such, investment in these emerging technologies is booming.

Green power is one of the few industries that is bucking the trend and not falling into the quicksand of the global slowdown in the financial markets.

2007 clean energy spending climbed to nearly $150bn (over £75bn) that’s a rise in excess of 60% over the previous year’s figures.

According to the latest annual report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) the only fly in the ‘green energy’ ointment is biofuel investment which actually fell by around 30%.

Fears that crop based biofuels may cause more harm than good by taking away from food production, making basic foods more expensive and causing potential massive food shortages, seem to be worrying investors.

In less than four years the UNEP predicts that spending on green energy will reach $450bn (£225bn+) per annum and by 2020 that figure is expected to top out somewhere over $600bn (£300bn+)

Most of this new investment during 2007 was made in the EU states, followed by the US, with big investments also coming online on the Indian subcontinent, Brazil and China.

The report does point out clear slowing in the first few months of this year, presumably reflecting growing nervousness in the world financial markets and an increasing strangling of large scale credit availability.

The British government has already committed itself to what it has dubbed a “green revolution” costing over £100bn, that includes mandated solar energy units in 25% of UK homes and massive investment in wind turbines across the nation.
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http://www.britemedia.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=1835#post1835

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=538&ArticleID=5849&l=en

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7483597.stm