The global financial crisis may not affect investment in renewable energy projects this year as countries strive to cut emissions of pollutants and reach a new climate-change agreement, the International Energy Agency said.
“Global investments in renewables won’t be severely affected,” Francois Nguyen, senior policy adviser, electricity markets at IEA, said at a conference in Singapore today, citing preliminary findings from a report. “Over the long run, there’s significant potential for investment in renewables.”
The IEA is preparing a report to assess the impact of the global recession and the credit crunch on spending in renewable energy, he said. New investment in clean energy projects worldwide climbed to $24.3 billion in the second quarter this year from $13.3 billion in the first, driven by programs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, New Energy Finance, a London-based consultant, said in a report on July 2.
Climate change will influence the development of the power sector, Nguyen said, as China and India aim to triple electricity consumption in the next two decades. Emissions can fall by 40 percent if output of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, including carbon dioxide, is reduced in power generation, he said.
United Nations scientists say greenhouse-gas output should peak by 2015 or temperatures may rise more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, adding to the risk of drought and flooding.
“China faces a CO2 challenge as 80 percent of power generation is from coal,” he said. China is setting aggressive and ambitious targets to boost wind and solar energy, Nguyen said.
Developing nations outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will account for 97 percent of the increase in carbon emissions by 2030, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, said in Kuala Lumpur in June.
Governments must make a sixfold increase in spending on renewable ventures relative to the recent economic stimulus to meet the IEA’s 450 parts per million carbon scenario, which would keep temperature increases to about 2 degrees, Tanaka said.
