Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016

Renewable energy set new records in 2015 for dollar investment, the amount of new capacity added and the relative importance of developing countries in that growth. All this happened in a year in which prices of fossil fuel commodities – oil, coal and gas – plummeted, causing distress to many companies involved in the hydrocarbon sector. So far, the drivers of investment in renewables, including climate change policies and improving cost-competitiveness, have been more than sufficient to enable renewables to keep growing their share of world electricity generation at the expense of carbon-emitting sources. The following renewable energy projects are included: all biomass and waste-to-energy, geothermal, and wind generation projects of more than 1MW; all hydropower projects of between 1MW and 50MW; all wave and tidal energy projects; all biofuel projects with a capacity of one million litres or more per year; and all solar projects, with those less than 1MW estimated separately and referred to as small-scale projects, or small distributed capacity, in this report.