Global clean energy investments reached record-breaking USD 329.4 billion in 2015, with the largest projects financed last year being offshore wind arrays in the North Sea and off China’s coast, according to data gathered by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The offshore wind projects in the North Sea which attracted largest investments in 2015 include the 580MW Race Bank offshore wind farm, with an estimated cost of USD 2.9 billion, the 336MW Galloper OWF at USD 2.3 bn, and the 402MW Veja Mate OWF at USD 2.1bn of estimated costs.
In China, the two 300MW offshore wind farms developed by Longyuan Power – Longyuan Haian Jiangjiasha OWF and Datang & Jiangsu Binhai OWF – came with a price tag of around 850 million each.
The total of the wind capacity added in 2015 is expected to be around 64GW, accounting for over a quarter of the overall net capacity added last year, which includes fossil fuel-powered and nuclear-powered capacity.
Clean energy investments surged in China, Africa, the US, Latin America and India, while Europe saw 18% less investments in green energy in 2015 than in 2014.
“These figures are a stunning riposte to all those who expected clean energy investment to stall on falling oil and gas prices. They highlight the improving cost-competitiveness of solar and wind power, driven in part by the move by many countries to reverse-auction new capacity rather than providing advantageous tariffs, a shift that has put producers under continuing price pressure,” Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said.
“Wind and solar power are now being adopted in many developing countries as a natural and substantial part of the generation mix: they can be produced more cheaply than often high wholesale power prices; they reduce a country’s exposure to expected future fossil fuel prices; and above all they can be built very quickly to meet unfulfilled demand for electricity. And it is very hard to see these trends going backwards, in the light of December’s Paris Climate Agreement.”
Offshore WIND Staff