Wednesday 17 January 2018
A boom in Chinese solar energy led global clean energy investments across 2017.
That's the verdict from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), which says this jump over-shadowed other shifts, such as rising investment in Australia and Mexico and declines in Japan, the UK and Germany.
The total figure reached $333.5 billion (£241.4bn) last year, up 3% from 2016 and only 7% short of the record figure of $360.3 billion (£261bn) reached in 2015.
Solar investment globally amounted to $160.8 billion (£117bn), up 18% on the previous year.
More than half of this amount was spent in China, to install an estimated 53GW of PV capacity, up from 30GW in 2016.
Jon Moore, Chief Executive of BNEF, said: "The 2017 total is all the more remarkable when you consider that capital costs for the leading technology – solar – continue to fall sharply.
"Typical utility-scale PV systems were about 25% cheaper per megawatt last year than they were two years earlier.”