Clean Economy growing faster than ever … but is it fast enough?
From Trash Talk to Climate Capital
2025 is on track as becoming a record year for clean energy project finance. As of early 2025, global clean energy investment has reached new heights, reflecting a significant shift toward low-carbon technologies.
Global Clean Energy Investment Trends
- 2024 Investment: Global clean energy investment hit a record $2.1 trillion in 2024, marking an 11% increase from 2023 and more than doubling the 2020 total. pv-magazine.com
- Sector Breakdown:
- Electrified Transport: $757 billion (36% of total investment), driven by electric vehicles and associated infrastructure.
- Renewable Energy: $728 billion, encompassing wind, solar, biofuels, and geothermal projects.
- Power Grids: $390 billion, focusing on transmission, distribution, and grid modernization.
- Energy Storage: $54 billion, supporting grid stability and renewable integration.
- Emerging Technologies: $155 billion, including hydrogen, carbon capture, and clean industry, though this sector saw a 23% decline year-over-year. about.bnef.com + pv-magazine.com + pv-magazine.com
Inefficiency & Waste — Mounting Problem or Unprecedented Business Opportunity?
Both, apparently. There is no cheaper feedstock that one that is initially seen a liability, representing a disposal cost. Turning that growing problem into assets and profits through clean technologies handles multiple issues at the same time. Efficiency always pays. When the “dirty” part of a waste stream contains nutrients, energy or otherwise useful materials, modern-day dumpster diving brings commercial value to the table. Extracting the waste from any system and redirecting it has economic upsides on par with “free” solar, wind, hydro, wave and geothermal energy. Limited only by our imagination. And capital.
This notion of efficiency also applies to the finance sector, where well-designed platforms increase access, streamline the flow of information (just-in-time rather than the old-school litany), collect all the necessary documents into one place, greatly reducing transaction costs.
The Middle Market Remains Key
One of the main issues is access to financing smaller projects, and the need for project equity investments in the middle market. Utility-scale projects often gain institutional investor support and represent an important piece of this puzzle, as this report shows. But what about the small- and mid-scale projects, ranging in size from $1 million to $400 million? Arguably they are 10-100 times more numerous, with more “distributed” projects providing greater diversity and stability, thus energy security, and can often leapfrog over failing or non-existent infrastructure.
Few projects in this middle market ever get funded, with most of the capital going upstream to $100 million – $500 million or larger projects
It is estimated that only one in twenty projects — that’s just 5% — actually gets funded in the current market; of the 95% that go nowhere, there are certainly a substantial number that deserve funding, but can’t quite pull it off. Why? The reasons for this vary from inexperience to sub-par economics (lack of efficiency or structural challenges), but with better organization of the deal flow and use of modern “fintech” tools, this has been cured. Want to know more? Check out our third speaker, Wayne Van Dyck, on 7 July’s Impact Innovation Investor Forum in Santa Clara. More
* The U.S. added a record 7.3 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity and 8.6 GW of wind in 2015, bringing total installed capacity to 25.6 GW for solar PV and 74.4 GW for wind. Looking specifically at utility-scale resources, solar and wind represented more than 60 percent of U.S. total net capacity additions in 2015. Further cost declines in renewable technologies, particularly solar PV, are expected to reinforce and accelerate this trend. Similarly, investment and savings from U.S. electric sector energy efficiency programs have reached unprecedented levels. (Excerpt from the Ceres/CleanEdge Benchmarking Utility Clean Energy Deployment: 2016 more).
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