Global renewable energy investment reached $241.6 billion in 2016

Recently, the United Nations released the “2017 Global Renewable Energy Investment Trends Report”, which reviewed and summarized the investment and performance of renewable energy in 2016. In 2016, the total global investment in renewable energy was 241.6 billion US dollars (excluding large-scale hydropower).

The report shows that the total investment in renewable energy in 2016 was $241.6 billion (excluding large hydropower), a decrease of 23% from 2015 and the lowest level since 2013. The investment in solar power generation projects has decreased significantly, with a year-on-year decrease of 34% and a total scale of 113.7 billion US dollars.

Experts said that the main reason for the decline in investment level was the reduction in technology costs. For example, the average capital expenditure per megawatt of solar photovoltaic energy and wind power energy fell by more than 10% in U.S. dollars, which is why many people thought that investment in renewable energy would continue to grow in 2016, but this report showed that the investment level did not rise but fell.

Moreover, the report shows that with the continuous decline in the cost of clean energy technology, despite a 23% decrease in investment compared to last year, the world’s installed capacity of renewable energy continued to grow at a record high in 2016.

Wind energy, solar energy, biomass energy and waste conversion energy, geothermal energy, small hydropower and ocean energy added 138.5GW of installed capacity to global power in 2016, up 9% from 127.5GW in 2015. The newly added installed capacity is roughly equal to the total installed capacity of the world’s 16 largest power generation facilities.

In addition, although investment in the renewable energy sector was cold in 2016, renewable energy was a major contributor to the electricity industry last year. The report shows that last year, the proportion of renewable energy (excluding large-scale hydropower) in power generation increased from 10.3% to 11.3%, avoiding approximately 1.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. So in terms of environmental performance, renewable energy plays an important role.

Not only this United Nations report, but the latest data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) also shows that in 2016, global economic output grew by 3.1%, while greenhouse gas emissions remained unchanged for the third consecutive year, mainly due to the global transition to renewable energy.