Category: Opinion

October 31 2012

Liebreich: UK Energy Policy – a Time of Consequences

Download the PDF here. Over the years I have attended hundreds of conference sessions on financing clean energy. Every time, the main conclusion is that financiers need a stable policy environment. Contrary to what the general public might expect, most serious investors in renewable energy don’t spend their time begging for bigger subsidies. Instead what […]

October 1 2012

Liebreich: Water may Top Up the Case for Renewables

So here we are in the final two months of a U.S. general election, and energy has become a “wedge issue,” separating the two candidates. Mitt Romney’s position is that he will remove the subsidies on clean energy and help the oil and gas industry make the U.S. energy independent by 2020. The president’s position […]

September 3 2012

Liebreich: Clean Energy’s Puberty Years – Bewildering and Irreversible

CLEAN ENERGY’S PUBERTY YEARS – BEWILDERING AND IRREVERSIBLE Download the PDF here. “Between the idea And the reality Between the motion and the act Falls the Shadow” TS Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925 These are difficult years for the clean energy sector. A few years ago the industry seemed to be entering a golden age […]

August 8 2012

Liebreich: Here Comes the “Rest of the World”

HERE COMES THE “REST OF THE WORLD” Download the PDF here. It is almost the half-way mark in 2012, and time to take stock of how the year is progressing so far for clean energy. We all knew this would be a difficult 12 months for the sector, with subsidies under pressure, extraordinarily cheap natural […]

July 31 2012

McCrone: Wave and Tidal Stream – Will it Always be Jam Tomorrow?

WAVE AND TIDAL STREAM – WILL IT ALWAYS BE JAM TOMORROW? Download the PDF here. By Angus McCrone Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance At Billia Croo on Orkney’s main island, off the north coast of Scotland, lush green fields slope down to the Atlantic, populated by plenty of well-fed cows and one utility-scale bull […]

June 7 2012

Liebreich: Exchange Rates could be Next Monster to Test Clean Energy Investors

Exchange rates could be next monster to test clean energy investors In the film Jurassic Park, the park warden Robert Muldoon, played by Bob Peck, focuses on the movement of one escaped velociraptor so completely that he fails to notice a second creeping up beside him. “Clever girl!” he says, as he finally turns and […]

May 3 2012

McCrone: Memo to Policy-makers: Re-charge the Development Banks

Memo to policy-makers: re-charge the development banks Could one answer to the clean energy financing shortage in Europe be hiding right under the noses of the region’s policy-makers? The question is pressing because blockages in the supply of loans from European Union banks are posing one of the biggest threats to clean energy investment this […]

April 5 2012

Liebreich: It’s the Politics, Stupid

Locating the fifth Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in New York last week offered two big advantages. One was being at the heart of capitalism because, despite the economic turmoil of the past few years, it will still be private capital that delivers the wherewithal for the world’s shift to clean energy. The other was […]

March 31 2011

Liebreich: Risk – The Big Mispricing; and on a Heroic Scale

By Michael Liebreich Chief Executive Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @MLiebreich How many times have we heard institutional investors explain – often in their talking-to-children voice – that the reason they do not invest in clean energy is that they dislike sectors with policy risk? In the light of events in the past year, perhaps […]

January 26 2011

Liebreich: 2011 Preview: A Year of Falling Costs and Rising Valuations?

By Michael Liebreich Chief Executive Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @MLiebreich So the new year is up and running, and as is customary, this is the point at which I have to take a stand and put down on paper what I think it is going to bring for our sector. Overall my guess is […]