Two years after Paris accord, clean energy projects fail to pick up

New investments in clean energy in developing countries fell by 27 percent to $111 billion in 2016, suggesting troubling results that highlight serious obstacles to scaling up these technologies.

This was part of the findings of Climatescope 2017, the fourth yearly installment of a report from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The report noted that the fall in investments came just two years after the historic agreement in Paris of some 200 nations pledging to address climate change.

Also, the decline was observed eight years after a meeting in Copenhagen where the world’s wealthiest nations promised to deliver $100 billion per year by 2020 to help poorer countries address climate change.

Results showed that China accounted for three quarters of the investments decline in 2016 while all other non-OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries fell by 25 percent from 2015 levels.

The latest Climatescope report covered 71 countries and evaluated their ability to attract capital for low-carbon energy sources while building a greener economy.

Climatescope started as an evaluation of Latin American and Caribbean nations, but has since expanded to include countries in other continents including Asia. The latest report does not yet include the Philippines.

Results also showed that foreign capital continued to play a critical role in the emerging markets clean energy scale-up but wealthier nations retreated from their support in 2016.

In 2016, a total of 60.7 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity in wind, solar, small hydro, geothermal, and biomass projects were commissioned in these 71 countries. This was a decline from 67.4 GW in 2015. —RONNEL W. DOMINGO