Investment in clean energy projects dipped 11 per cent last year, according to new figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), which confirmed the $268.7bn invested still made 2012 the second most successful year on record for the global clean energy sector.
The analyst firm also revealed the rapid expansion of China's clean energy market continued last year, with investment rising 20 per cent to $67.7bn, allowing China to re-take the top spot from the US.
The latest BNEF figures reveal a shift in the nature of the global clean energy market, with emerging economies partially compensating for an investment slowdown in mature markets caused by policy uncertainty in key markets such as the US, Spain and Italy and a sharp reduction in the cost of solar and wind technologies.
However, strong growth in China, South Africa and Japan, which benefitted from the launch of the country's post-Fukushima renewable energy subsidy scheme, was unable to fully offset a drop in US investment of almost a third caused by policy uncertainty and increased competition from relatively low cost gas, as well as falls in investment for Spain and Italy of 68 per cent and 51 per cent respectively.
"We warned at the start of last year that investment in 2012 was likely to fall below 2011 levels, but rumours of the death of clean energy investment have been greatly exaggerated," said BNEF chief executive Michael Liebreich. "Indeed, the most striking aspect of these figures is that the decline was not bigger - given the fierce headwinds the clean energy sector faced in 2012 as a result of policy uncertainty, the ongoing European fiscal crisis, and continuing sharp falls in technology costs. Solar PV module prices, for instance, fell another 24 per cent over the course of last year."
He also predicted emerging markets were likely to play an increasingly important role in the expansion of the continued expansion of the global clean energy sector.
"Another message from the 2012 data is that investment is broadening rapidly, from established markets such as Europe, the US and China, to new ones in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia-Oceania," he said. "Australia, South Africa, Morocco, the Ukraine, Mexico, Kenya, Brazil, Ethiopia, Chile and South Korea were among the countries seeing at least one project of more than $250m financed during the year."
The figures confirmed spending was down across almost all technology types and investment categories.
For example, solar investment shrunk nine per cent to $142.5bn, wind investment dropped 13 per cent to $78.3bn, biomass and waste-to-energy investment slumped 27 per cent to $9.7bn. In contrast, small hydro projects provided one of the few bright spots for the sector, with investment climbing 17 per cent to $7.6bn.
Similarly, asset finance for utility-scale projects slipped from $180bn in 2011 to $148.6bn last year, while venture capital investment and merger and acquisition activity were both down sharply, in part due to the continued travails of clean energy stocks.
However, more encouraging news came from small-scale renewable energy projects, primarily in the rooftop solar space, which rose from $76.5bn in 2011 to $80.2bn last year, and corporate and government-funded clean energy research, which despite the tough economic backdrop rose marginally to $30.2bn.
The latest figures follow a similar report last week from Clean Energy Pipeline, which argued that despite an investment rally during the fourth quarter of the year, total clean energy investment for 2012 fell 14 per cent to $256bn.
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