India has dropped to the second position in Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s (BNEF) 2020 Climatescope survey ranking from first last year, as a result of a decline in clean energy investment, which fell 12 per cent in 2018-19 to $8.5 billion and has plummeted 32 per cent since 2017.
Chile has bagged the top spot in the survey reflective of its strong clean energy policies while, Brazil remained at the third position.
However, the report added that Mainland China and India continued to be the biggest markets for clean energy investment with Mainland China far and away the largest.
"Between them, the two nations accounted for $94 billion of new wind and solar investment and 76 gigawatt (GW) of wind and solar build in 2019,” said the report published on Wednesday.
It added that renewables, excluding large hydro, account for a fourth of India’s 377 GW installed capacity, and since 2017, capacity additions from renewables have exceeded those of coal.
“While wind capacity additions of 2.25 GW in both 2019 and 2018 were below 2017 levels, PV additions have risen every year since 2014, and solar posted its best year to date in 2019 with 11.5GW installed,” said the BNEF report.
The report also added that the total foreign direct investment (FDI) in renewables set a new record at $32 billion in 2019, up from a previous high of $24 billion in 2018. It said that the majority – 84 per cent – of the 2019 total came from international project developers, utilities, commercial banks and other private sources.
“Power-generating capacity from solar plants such as photovoltaic projects reached 325 GW, up from just 1GW a decade earlier. Wind investment hit an all-time annual high, with $89 billion deployed to build projects in 30 emerging markets, both onshore and offshore,” according to the report.
The report is an annual survey of the energy transition in developing countries and represents 123 detailed data indicators on 108 emerging markets globally.
It said that three in 10 emerging markets installed more solar capacity than capacity from any other source in 2019 and about 69 markets built new utility-scale or small-scale solar in 2019, funded with over $48 billion.
Solar ended 2019 as 8 per cent of emerging markets power-generating capacity and 2 per cent of generation and currently, 95 markets have at least 10 megawatts (MW) of installed solar capacity, it said.
This article is reproduced at energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com
