Category: Opinion

January 27 2010

Liebreich: A Goldilocks Year for Clean Energy: Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold? Our 10 Predictions for 2010

By Michael Liebreich Chief Executive Bloomberg New Energy Finance So here we are in 2010. Last year finished with the disappointment of the much-hyped COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen, but we should not forget that we have seen a period of huge accomplishments for the clean energy industry. Here are my favourite milestones from the […]

December 22 2009

Liebreich: Clean Energy’s Though Year – What We Got Right and What We Got Wrong

By Michael Liebreich Chairman and CEO New Energy Finance This is the final VIP Brief of 2009, when we get to look back at the events of the last year. Fresh in As I write this, the world is picking through the wreckage of Copenhagen, looking for something to salvage from the debris. The “Copenhagen […]

November 26 2009

Liebreich: Copenhagen Is Dead – Long Live Copenhagen

By Michael Liebreich Chairman and CEO New Energy Finance Last month, speaking of December’s COP 15 negotiations in Copenhagen, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said we had 50 days to save the world and “no Plan B”. At the recent UN Climate Summit in New York, the talk was of urging politicians to Seal the […]

October 22 2009

Liebreich: Inflation, Deflation and the Implications for Clean Energy

By Michael Liebreich Chairman and CEO New Energy Finance As investors around the world in all sectors – not just clean energy and carbon – try to work out how to play the recovery, they are facing their deepest quandary for decades. Will “quantitative easing”, near-zero interest rates and spiralling government deficits result in a […]

September 25 2009

McCrone: Copenhagen – Countries May Be Starting to See the Wood for the Trees

By Angus McCrone Chief Editor New Energy Finance It is bad enough getting older without actually having to watch the seconds drain away. For that reason, I suggest not looking at the website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where a digital clock remorselessly counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds […]

September 1 2009

Liebreich: Feed-In Tariffs – Solution or Time-Bomb?

By Michael Liebreich Chairman and CEO New Energy Finance As the first of $163bn worth of promised stimulus spending starts to soak into the parched ground of the world’s clean energy industry, attention is shifting back to the perennial question of the policy mechanisms required to drive the roll-out of renewable energy over the longer […]

July 23 2009

Liebreich: Smart Grid – A Leap of Faith

By Michael Liebreich Chairman & CEO New Energy Finance Over the past five years the grid has moved from the periphery of discussions about how to restructure the world’s energy system, to its very heart. There have been three main reasons why even our daily papers have started enthusing about the smart grid. First, there […]

June 25 2009

Liebreich: Why Cap-and-Trade Will Continue to Hold the Aces

By Michael Liebreich Chairman and CEO New Energy Finance Anyone who was underestimating the ferocity of the high-stakes card game being played in the run up to Copenhagen in December should be doing so no longer, thanks to the fate of this month’s official negotiating sessions in Bonn. Work on a draft negotiating text will […]

May 28 2009

Liebreich: The Risk is that the Next Cycle Could Be Another Roller-Coaster

By Michael Liebreich Chairman and CEO New Energy Finance Last month our chief editor Angus McCrone reported on the astonishing drop in investment activity in the clean energy sector in Q1 this year, and speculated on whether the stimulus funds being launched with so much fanfare around the world would help prevent 2009 being consigned […]

April 23 2009

McCrone: Will the Cavalry Come Over the Hill?

By Angus McCrone Chief Editor New Energy Finance So now we know how bad it is. The clean energy sector was in deep hibernation through the winter months, with investment levels sharply down in asset finance, venture capital and private equity, and – most dramatically of all – in the public markets. New Energy Finance’s […]