Green Investing: Towards a Clean Energy Infrastructure
Executive Summary In this report, the World Economic Forum examines the status of investment volumes in clean energy and surveys the different technologies that will contribute significantly to a future low-carbon energy infrastructure, as well as the key enablers that are required in order to allow those technologies to get to scale. This report also analyses the current volume of investment in clean energy and its performance, the impact of the global financial crisis on the sector, and highlights developments in the carbon markets and global negotiations which affect clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions as a whole.
Liebreich: New Energy Finance Sees Year of Consolidation for Clean Energy in 2009
By Michael Liebreich Chairman & CEO New Energy Finance With Barack Obama now firmly installed in the White House – after a historic US election that felt like it lasted decades – we can now declare that 2009 has truly begun. This is the time of year when we go out on a limb and predict what sort of year it is going to be. Some years are easy to call; this one is not.
Liebreich: Our Crystal Ball Foresaw Aspects of 2008 – But not Their Severity
By Michael Liebreich Chairman & CEO New Energy Finance So 2008 finally draws to a close - an “annus horribilis” if ever there was one. We have seen with shattering clarity the end of a long period of general economic growth optimism; in the clean energy sector we have seen the end of an extraordinary four-year surge in investment activity, with ever-rising valuations. Gone are the times when we reported growth and excitement in every sector, every country and every asset class of clean energy and the carbon markets.
Liebreich: Reasons to be Fearful, Reasons to be Cheerful
By Michael Liebreich Chairman & CEO New Energy Finance Project developers are finding it much more difficult to get debt finance. Ambitious companies are having to shelve plans to go public. Large corporations are trimming back some of their ambitions in renewable energy. Clean energy share prices have fallen by more than 50%. The price of emitting a tonne of carbon dioxide in Europe has dropped. The oil price has tumbled by an astonishing $90-a-barrel in just four months. The biggest US ethanol company, VeraSun Energy, has gone bankrupt.
Liebreich: Taking Stock of Clean Energy After October Storm
By Michael Liebreich Chairman & CEO New Energy Finance “April is the cruellest month”, claims the famous opening line of TS Eliot’s Wasteland. Maybe for poets, but not for investors: October 1907, October 1929, October 1987, October 2008.
Liebreich: Time to Plot a New Future for Policy on Clean Energy
By Michael Liebreich Chairman & CEO New Energy Finance The clean energy sector has had a tremendous few years, with investment volume soaring nearly five times between 2004 and 2007, but new challenges mean that the next decade of development is likely to look very different. This makes it essential that we use this moment to demand the policy support that the industry will need for that coming decade.
Liebreich: March of the Giants – Records Shattered Anew in Surge for Scale
By Michael Liebreich Chairman & CEO New Energy Finance In the world of evolutionary biology, Cope’s Rule states that a species’ body size tends to increase over time, absenting a good reason to the contrary. You can see Cope’s Rule at work not only in the animal world: it happens with cars, it happens with Olympic athletes.
New Energy Finance Summit: The Results
A special publication documenting the 2008 New Energy Finance Summit.
Food price increases: is it fair to blame biofuels?
Executive Summary The price of food staples has risen by up to 244% since 2004. The media has been quick to blame the biofuels industry. In October 2007 Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food1*, kicked things off by describing it as “a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel”. Since then no article on food price increases has failed to mention biofuels as a main driver of increases in the price of food staples around the world.
Liebreich: Biofuels – Bit-Part Player not Main Villain in Food Price Heist
By Michael Liebreich Chairman and CEO New Energy Finance It is no fun being in the dock. With critics accusing biofuels of being everything from a “crime against humanity” to “unsustainable” and a “disaster”, executives in that sector must be worrying what names their children are being called at school.