Clean energy investments hit by global financial woes

Environment News Service: The global economic downturn has hit clean energy investments and their growth is no longer on track for the world to avert the worst impacts of climate change, said clean energy and carbon market analysts New Energy Finance today.

The analysts presented findings of their new report, Global Futures 2009, to senior investors, industry executives and policy makers in clean energy and the carbon markets at the second New Energy Finance Summit in London. Summit participation is by invitation only and is limited to 200 people. Although lower economic activity due to the financial crisis will reduce carbon dioixide emissions, the analysts said, in the longer term the drying up of funding for lower-carbon energy solutions is likely to have far greater adverse impact on emissions.
Michael Liebreich, chairman and chief executive of New Energy Finance, said, "This should be a real wake-up call. New Energy Finance is generally on the optimistic side of the debate. Even with the current recession we are more bullish on the shift to clean energy than most mainstream analysts."

"However, it is no longer possible to say we are on track to achieve peak CO2 by 2020," Liebreich said. "Something has to happen, either in terms of restoring credit to clean energy projects, or in terms of a surprisingly substantial outcome in Copenhagen."

This is a crucial year in the international effort to address climate change, culminating in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, set for December 7-18.

Newly constructed windmills D4 (nearest) to D1 on the Thornton Bank, 28 km off shore, on the Belgian part of the North Sea. Shot by Hans Hillewaert (Lycaon), Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2