Third quarter clean energy investments jump 40% year-on-year

A strong third quarter of global investments in clean energy have led the research organisation Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) to speculate that the year 2017 might exceed 2016’s total of $288bn injected into clean energy.

BNEF says that the world invested $70bn in clean energy in Q3 2017, up from $65bn in the second quarter of this year and $48bn in the third quarter of 2016. This means investment in 2017 is so far running 2% above that in the same period of last year. This year looks unlikely, however, to beat the record of $349bn invested in 2015, says BNEF.

A number of giant wind projects costing between $600mn and $4.5bn in the US, Mexico, the UK, Germany, China and Australia helped boost the Q3 figure. The $4.5bn came in the form of American Electric Power investing in Invenergy’s 2 GW Wind Catcher project in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The 800-turbine project, which will be connected to a 560 km high-voltage power line, is due to be completed by 2020.

Other notable transactions include DONG Energy’s decision to proceed with the 1.4 GW Hornsea 2 offshore wind farm in the UK at an estimated $3.7bn, and Northland Power’s financing of the 252 MW Deutsche Bucht array in German waters, at $1.6bn.

The biggest solar project financing was an estimated $460mn for First Solar’s 381 MW California Flats PV park in the US.

Breaking the Q3 2017 figures down by type of investment, asset finance of utility-scale renewable energy projects jumped 72% globally compared to Q3 2016, reaching $54bn. Small-scale project investment (solar systems of less than 1 MW) came to $11bn in the latest quarter, up 9%. BNEF says that all three public markets, venture capital and private equity investment in specialist clean energy companies had subdued activity in Q3 2017.