Global investment in renewable energy projects hit its second-highest level in the first six months of this year, with solar leading the pack, according to a new report.
The $313 billion in renewable investments in the first half of 2024 were 11% below the record levels seen in the second half of last year, but close to year-ago levels, BloombergNEF’s Renewable Energy Investment Tracker released Tuesday shows. The group attributed the drop to falling prices for solar panels and continued challenges for wind power.
Solar is driving the action in the world’s transition to a green economy.
Investment in utility- and small-scale solar projects rose 6% to $221 billion in the first half of 2024 compared to year-ago levels — their sixth consecutive half-annual record. While a worldwide drop in the price of solar modules pushed down per-megawatt spending, small-scale solar investment spiked 34% to $126.7 billion compared to year-ago levels.
Meanwhile, wind investments plunged 26% compared to the second half of last year, to just under $91 billion. Offshore wind projects dived 56% year-on-year, partly due to seasonal timing of government auction calendars. Meanwhile, onshore wind investments climbed 13% year-on-year.
Mainland China is once again the biggest market for renewables, even as its nearly $130 billion of new investment in the first six months of this year was 4% less than in the first half of 2023. The report said cheaper equipment costs for both wind and solar, along with gridlocks, contributed to the decline.
Green China
A separate BloombergNEF “Power Transition Trends” report released Tuesday said that for the first time, zero-carbon energy sources fueled more than 40% of global electricity generation last year — a first. Some 14% came from wind and solar — a record high. China, already a leader in adopting solar, wind and hydroelectric power, produced nearly one-third of all global renewable energy last year.
The 40% figure suggests that across the planet, collective momentum toward clean power has dramatically accelerated.
But because China’s outsized role in adopting solar means it accounts for a big chunk of the world’s total, the per-country rise is more muted. Globally, additions of solar capacities spiked by 96% from 2022 to 2023. But when mainland China is excluded from the data, the growth rate plunges to just 4%.
“Mainland China maintained its ‘head and shoulders’ stance above the US, Brazil, Canada and India last year in adoption of fossil-free technologies,” the Power Transition Trends report said.
‘Leapfrogging’
Solar and wind accounted for more than 90% of global capacity additions last year, the Power Transition Trends report said. Solar alone represented 71% of total new build, while wind contributed 19%. Overall, zero-carbon technologies reached 46% of global installed capacity, compared with 33% in 2012.
Collectively, 10 major economies accounted for nearly three-quarters of total renewable energy generation last year. China is the only market among the top 10 to see a constant increase in renewables generation over the past 10 years. That leaves what the Rockefeller Foundation said earlier this month is a need for a “green leapfrogging” by Africa and much of Asia to overcome their dependence on fossil fuels.
In a May report, BloombergNEF said that “progress in the next 10 years is critical. Calling the time frame a “make-or-break decade, it added that hewing to a net zero path “will require an immediate peaking of emissions and fossil-fuel use across the global energy system — spanning the power, transport, industrial and buildings sectors.”
