renewables – Investing In The Time of Climate Change

⚡️Energy Issues of 2019: Batteries, Blockchain & Microgrids

Moving into 2019, I will keep my eyes on the following issue:

🔋Batteries

Batteries are what will enable a sustainable energy future for us by tackling the ongoing problem of intermittency. Since solar and wind energy are intermittent 💡 (in a nutshell: if the sun stops shining because it’s cloudy, your solar panel stops producing electricity), they cannot be fully integrated into the baseload energy supply (powered by coal, gas, dams and other “reliable” sources). With batteries, you collect energy and store it for later use, the same way a water canister collects rainwater for later use.

Renewables – Storage = NOT A COMPLETE SOLUTION

Alessandro Volta, inventor of the battery

Right now: the lights that are currently on in your house or office have been generated by electricity produced moments ago. This is how our gird works, supply must meet demand, and the electricity that is not used is wasted.

Currently, the best most extensively used technology we have got on the market is the lithium-ion battery. As the cost of production of these batteries continues to fall, Elon Musk (founder of Tesla) believes that lithium-ion battery costs will fall to $100/KWh by 2020, dropping from a price of $1,000 only as recently as 2010. Bloomberg forecasts battery storage costs to drop below $50 by 2030. As of today, the cost is in the $200 range. As the cost continues to drop, renewable energy sources will become increasingly cost competitive with conventional energy production. Moreover, the growth of electric vehicles (EV) is driving lithium-ion battery production. EVs currently make up only roughly 1% of all vehicles, but that will change rapidly. According to a McKinsey & Company, the EV segment of the light-duty vehicle market could reach 20% by 2030, pushing the need to develop, better and cheaper batteries further.

But lithium-ion batteries are not the only game in town. There are many companies operating in the in the hot sector, a notable one being Ambri, the liquid metal battery startup which spun out of MIT materials research, which received funding from the likes of Bill Gates. Other battery companies, in the last two years have for different reasons gone under, such as the Aquion saltwater battery, Alevo filing for bankruptcy, LightSail burning through its cash for its compressed air storage; ViZn Energy is on its last legs looking for new funding for its flow battery.

The challenge for the non-lithium ion startups lays in demonstrating that their battery is significantly less expensive than the lithium-ion one and can perform over a long lifetime with limited degradation. This is an enormously technically challenging for now.

2. Digitalization: Microgrids, Blockchain Technology, Data

Digitalization is an umbrella term thrown around by people in different sectors. In the context of energy, digitalization groups developing technologies such as microgrids*, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data and Peer to Peer Technology, which improve efficiency and reduce costs.

This is a rapidly evolving area which is positioned to shift our energy system away from its centralized one-way street structure. It wants to shift our reliance on power stations and energy retailers, cutting out the middleman (and the associated cost) and moving us to more decentralized energy distribution.

⚡️Wholesale electricity distribution⚡️

Technology has the tendency to cut out the middleman , in this case, its the energy retailers. The end goal of blockchain and microgrids is to enable consumers to buy and trade directly from the grid, making traditional energy retailers unnecessary. The marketplace would be made up of consumers who buy and sell to each other based on their respective energy needs. This would significantly more cost-effective and energy efficient, because connecting local use and production with local grids, can allow us to achieve local balance.

I already can hear the, “But this would be terribly inconvenient! Wouldn’t buying electricity when you need it be totally impractical-besides how am I even supposed to know how much to buy and when?!“

Not at all. Not if we have an IoT (Internet of Things) device that automatically buys it for when you need it and how much you need. A device could be built into our homes, which would electricity when it’s cheapest at low demand, stores it in a battery, and then sells it back to the grid when energy is expensive at high demand.

In such a case blockchain technology would be the “middleman”.

Peer to Peer (P2P) Energy

Screenshot 2019-02-03 at 15.13.04 — Solar PV Price Decline

With the boom in solar panel installations and with the exponential decline in prices, we are not just energy consumers anymore — we are also the producers. If there are multiple people who produce energy in your neighbourhood, with their private solar panels, then you have a theoretical market place.

💡Case in point: I have solar panels on my roof to power my house. If I have leftover energy from my solar panels, it is sold back to the grid. Due to inefficiencies and high distribution costs in this process, I am not making much money.

With P2P energy, I could sell this leftover energy to my neighbour using blockchain technology. Because the blockchain acts as the middleman in this transaction, I would make more money selling it to my neighbour than I would selling it back to the grid. This is because:

It’s cheaper for the neighbour to buy energy from me rather than our energy retailer. My neighbour can support renewables if they themselves do not have solar panels
It’s a more eco-friendly and more efficient use of electricity as less energy is lost along during the transmission from power station to the house, since the electricity would be traveling from my house to the neighbours house

On a small and local scale, there are pioneering companies that are already doing this in the US and in Australia.

Right now, microgrids are an additional grid which operates in parallel with the current grid. But P2P blockchain companies anticipate this to evolve into larger, more distributed, interconnected microgrids.

📈Data is King

The energy sector collects enormous amounts of data on a continuous basis, thanks to the application of sensors, wireless transmission, network communication, and cloud technology. Data is being collected on both the supply and demand sides.

Data is only valuable if you know how to use it. The challenge rests in understanding how to harness this information in an efficient manner. But companies are starting to understand what this data can do for them and for the economy as a whole.

The only way to give this technology true value is to enable a statistical big data approach to it.

Intelligence comes from algorithms and self-learning, and from using data collected from sensors, databases, users, and meters.

As we gather and store information taken out of the energy system and smart meters, we can also compare that information to data that comes from weather patterns or consumer behavior.

By combining data streams, consumers and energy companies can be more efficient, make better use of their availability and aggregate capacity at the right time, in the right moment of the market, at the highest value, and create a better balance between demand and supply.

💡Case in Point: Devices in my house knows at what temperature I turn the heating on in my house, before I turn it on, and predict weather events, such as snowstorms which would trigger me to switch the heating on. The device would then, preemptively buy electricity at lower demand and store it in a battery for when the snowstorm arrives and the prices are higher.

Digitalization is already providing new opportunities for suppliers by optimizing their valuable assets, integrating renewable energies from different resources, and reducing operational costs; at the same time, it favors consumers by reducing the energy bills.

——

*If you are unfamiliar with microgrids and the implications that they will have (dare I say, are having) please check out my previous articles on the subject, The Energy Infrastructure That the U.S. Really Needs and🇺🇸Mr. Trump, Make The Grid Great Again!

🇩🇪Not all that Glitters is Green: German Renewables surpass coal in Electricity Generation⚡️

According to the Munich based Fraunhofer Institute, Germany’s renewables generated more electricity than coal in 2018 for the first time ever, with renewables providing 40% of the annual produced electricity and coal provided just 38%.

Note that, “renewables” is a general term that includes different sources—solar, wind, hydroelectric, and biomass (mostly wood pellets)—while coal is just a single fuel source meaning that renewables have not displaced fossil fuels, just coal.

The growth in renewables can be attributed, in part, to:

a prolonged hot sunny summer across Germany helping produce more renewable energy this year than last year, increasing solar output, by adding 3.2 gigawatts (GW) of solar to an existing 45.5 GW last year.

The remainder of Germany’s 2018 electricity production came from gas plants and nuclear plants.

While Germany did break ground, and on its own, this is great news, there are two sides to this story that make this achievement less impressive then it sounds.

✨All that glitters is not green✨

For starters, it stands to reason that if the solar energy grew, at least in part because of favourable weather rather then sustainable growth, then this growth is accidental rather then structural. So what could have been expected of those figures had the summer been rainy and cloudy?

Secondly, coal and lignite* (dirtiest of all fossil fuels with relation to carbon dioxide emissions — but also the cheapest) still account for more than 1/3 of Germany’s electricity needs. Closing all of the country’s roughly 120 coal-fired power plants may take over 20 years, according to the government. Moreover, in 2011, following the Fukushima accident, the government decided to shut down 20% of the country’s nuclear reactors and close the rest by 2022. With nuclear on its way out, can we realistically 11.7% of Germany’s energy mix to replaced by renewables in a timely manner?

fig3_share_of_energy_sources_in_gross_german_power_production_2018.png

💸High Cost for Low Rewards?💸

Former Green environment minister Jürgen Trittin famously said that the burden placed on German households by the renewable energy surcharge would amount to “only around one euro per month, the price of a scoop of ice cream.” But the regular addition of renewables to the German power grid meant that the German taxpayer’s electricity bill was quickly inflated by the renewables surcharge, making Trittin’s well-intentioned comparison obsolete and quasi-comical.

Let me be clear: public dialogue about the energy transition’s price tag is propelled by a characteristic of Germany’s payment system green energies: consumers pay a renewables surcharge in their electricity bills. While this method may be more transparent than many alternatives based on direct state subsidies, it also elicits public debates about the costs. If the German electricity generation is what it is today, we have the German taxpayers to thank for it.

As of 2018, the surcharge made up 23% of the power price paid by an average household. In other words, German electricity bills would be 23% cheaper if renewables did not exist altogether. However, new research led by Alberto Gandolfi from Goldman Sachs, shows that from now onwards the marginal capacity that is going to be added to the system is going to be deflationary, meaning that the surcharge accounts for old and less efficient renewable energy, and the new highly efficient renewable which will be added from now onwards will have to potential to decrease the surcharge.

Bearing in mind that the cost of solar PV has plummeted by about 80%, wind (both offshore and onshore) has dropped by about between 50% and 70% since 2010, therefore Gandolfi’s research seems likely to materialize in the near future.

Nevertheless, in spite of the higher energy bills, public opinion has remained supportive of the energy transition. Research conducted in 2017 by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam found that 88% of those surveyed support the strategy to cut emissions.

Bear in mind that the energy transition’s costs are difficult to quantify. Estimates of the total amount of annual investment vary from 15 to 40 billion euros or 0.5% to 1.2% of Germany’s current GDP of around 3,200 billion euros.

Missed Targets

The German Bundestag has committed to reducing Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2020, by at least 55% in 2030, by at least 70% in 2040 and by 80-95% in 2050 compared to 1990 levels. Germany’s ambitious targets also sought to reduce German dependence on imported energy, to shift electricity from fossil fuels to green sources, to make transportation and buildings more energy efficient.

Germany’s progress in achieving its targets if falling widely short of expectations. The government recently admitted that they will fall short of their 2020 target by 8%, achieving only 32% reduction of emissions since 1990 vs. the 40% target and will thus fail to meet its goals as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

If we look above at the above electricity production for Germany, coal (meaning Hard coal and Lignite) plays an enormous role. While Hard coal consumption has dropped, lignite has not decreased significantly. The reason for this is that lignite coal is too cheap and reliable. The second reason is that touching lignite is a sensitive political issue, even in Germany, due to the roughly 22,500 people whose jobs depend on it. Although employment in the coal industry is on its way out (see above below), the jobs are located in economically fragile areas, where losses would be felt deeply.

German Coal Employment

Screen Shot 2019-01-05 at 12.29.36.png — source: Statistik der Kohlenwirtschaft e.V., chart from Bloomberg

However, the relative cheapness of lignite is explained by the fact the price of carbon is not factored into its price. This means that is we were to see the real price of coal, with the price of pollution factored into it, it would not be cheap at all. In any case, the market favours “cheap coal” and this is why its use has barely decreased, despite falling profits from coal plants.

germany coal.jpg — source: Euracoal, 2015, Coal Deposits

Moreover, Germany’s target to put 1 million electric vehicles on the road is clearly going to be missed, since by the end of 2017 there were 131,000. The government’s strategy of aEUR 4000 subsidy per vehivle on green vehicles is all but wasted without a coherent and structured strategy to switch conventional vehicles with green vehicles.

The fact that Germany is set to miss its 2020 targets by 8% is terrible news. The OECD has called on Germany to take additional measures to make up for the loss, but nothing concrete has come out it., yet.

Therefore, although German renewables surpassing coal in electricity generation can be seen as a glimmer of hope in an otherwise grey backdrop, there are structural problems that stand in the way of achieving necessary reduction targets. And if Germany cannot achieve its own targets, then who can?

*Lignite, a.k.a brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible, sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It is considered the lowest rank of coal to its relatively low heat content and high moisture level, which means that it is very polluting and highly inefficient. It has a carbon content around 60–70%.

Required Reading: Energiewende 2030: The Big Picture http://bit.ly/2FfCdIT

🔥What is tax equity and why should I care?

There is quite a bit of confusion regarding what tax equity is for renewable energy and how it can be taken advantage of. This is largely because tax equity structures are ubiquitously understood to be complicated, meaning many firms just don’t bother with them. That’s a mistake. Tax equity can be a powerful incentive for developing RE in the USA.

Companies that have managed navigate the system have been able to reap the benefits of tax equity structures, but new entrants can be deterred, therefore bypassing potential benefits.

What is Tax Equity?

Tax equity is where renewable energy and tax policy intersect. Basically, tax equity is a creative and complex way to split the benefits of installing and producing RE electricity from their corresponding tax benefits.

Tax credits, however, can only be used by clean energy developers who are profitable enough to pay larger amounts of taxes. Because of this, many smaller players, who are not very profitable cannot reap the benefits of tax credits. Hence, they must find an investment partner with enough income to be able to reap credible benefits from tax credits.

Installing renewable energy is subsidized by a tax credit. This means that a solar project developer/company/host wants to have the benefits of solar electricity production (via decreased utility bills) but does not the tax liability to use the tax credits, so it passes those credits to an investor who in return puts up capital to pay for the solar project. The objective is to reduce its own tax bill by receiving the tax deduction. Tax equity financing is primarily provided by large banks, insurers or big corporations which provide upfront investment in exchange for tax credits associated with the development of (usually) solar energy projects.

Example:

Take solar developer start-up, Sunny Ltd., who wants to develop a large solar PV project. The cost of the project would be $1m. Although such an investment in RE carries corresponding tax credits, Sunny Ltd. is currently not profitable enough to take advantage of them, so they decide to rope in a Tax Equity Investor. The Tax Equity Investor, represented by Capital One Bank, wants to apply the tax credits to their own corporate tax bill.

So Capital One Bank can put up, say 40% of the solar project financing, used as equity (the remaining 60% hypothetically will come from debt).

So if the bank puts up $400K in equity, they could hypothetically reduce their tax bill by a certain amount over the course of a contract.

State of the Market

According to specialized law firm Chadbourne & Park, the market is steadily increasing. The U.S wind and solar markets in 2015 saw $11.5 billion in new tax equity deals, up from $10.1b from the year before. According to John Eber, head of energy investments at J.P Morgan, of that 11.5b, $6.4b was secured in the wind marketplace for projects totaling 5,700 megawatts capacity. There was three main sponsors int he winds tax equity investors that completed deals totaling $1b each (47% of tax equity raised in 2015).

In the solar residential tax equity market, about $2.6b was raised by three leading residential solar companies, accounting for 90% of the residential market, (up from $1.9b in 2014). Eber went on to say that distributed generation and utility-scale solar marketplace accounted for an additional $2.5b in tax equity deals. Eber says there are about 20 active tax equity investors in the wind marketplace and 27 in solar, with some crossover, and of the 20 active investors in wind, 17 entered into deals in 2015.

The small number of players is attributed, in part to the complex nature of tax equity and the associated costs and in part due to the fact that tax equity investors must have very large tax liabilities, to justify such operations.

But be that as it may, it is still a huge increase if you consider that after the financial crisis, the number of Tax Equity Investors collapsed from 14 providers to just 5 (Jacoby, University of Pennsylvania Law Review), since in order to take advantage of tax equity, you need to have huge tax liabilities and the after 2008 fewer companies had the necessary tax liabilities to make tax credits attractive.

Before we have a look at a few tax equity structures used, bear in mind who the stakeholders are:

Tax Equity Agreements usually have three stakeholders, although sometimes the developer and host are the same:

A Developer (ex. a solar PV installer like SolarCity or FirstSolar ) who identifies a potential solar project and decides to undertake the costs and risks of engineering, procurement, installation, and commissioning;
The Solar Host who is usually either a residential or commercial building owner, and is interested in the benefits of solar power;
A Tax Equity Investor who usually is an institution like a bank or a corporation like Google, that has to have two things:
1. high tax liabilities, or at least high enough to make a tax credit attractive
2. the liquidity necessary to undertake the development of a solar project.

The Tax Equity Investor has to agree to finance and own the project for a number of years and in return for undertaking the construction and ownership costs of the solar project the company will receive the corresponding tax deductions.

The Tax Equity Investor is the defacto owner of the physical solar panels, while the benefits go to the host, and once the Tax Equity Investor reaps in the desired returns brought by the tax credits associated with the solar projects they return ownership to the developer.

Tax credit structures can vary quite a bit, but here are the two most common types:

The Partnership Flip

As you can probably imagine, a Tax Equity Investor does not necessarily want to hang on to the solar panels for the entire life of the project- why would they? Enter The Partnership Flip. This is where the ownership of a project is owned by both developer and tax equity investor but in varying degrees.

The Tax Equity Investor and the developed enter into a partnership in which the have joint ownership of the solar project. Say, at the beginning of the project the ownership the Tax Equity Investor will hold 90% while and the developer will own 10%. Progressively, as the Tax Equity Investor begins to reap the rewards of the tax credits, the ownership of the project will begin to “flip”, whereby the Tax Equity Investor will own 60% and the Developer 40%…then 50%-50% until it is 10%-90% for the Developer.

Sale – Leaseback Agreement

screen-shot-2017-02-05-at-22-19-16 — Source: Woodlawn Associates

This agreement sees the solar developer selling the project to the tax equity investor and then the tax equity investor leases it back to the solar developer. It’s actually simpler than a partnership, because all the tax benefits pass directly to the tax equity invest right away, whereas with a partnership, years pass before the Tax Equity Investor reaps all the benefits.

The Developer will install, operate and maintain the project and a Host will agree to purchase the power generated from the project, via a PPA.

The Investor keeps all the tax benefits and receives payment (cash) in the form of rent from the solar developer. The developer’s revenue from the PPA is used to make rental payments under the lease. The developer has a taxable gain on the sale of the project to the extent that the value of the project exceed the cost to build it. Indeed, the developer will usually have the option, exercisable at the end of the lease period, to buy the project from the investor at its fair market value.

The developer and the tax equity investor are like to two passengers in a car, when the car hits a bump, they are both impacted.

With solar and wind installations predicted to increase, 2017 will definitely see more tax equity deals for renewable energy, but what remains to be seen is if investors will be able to keep and meet the capital requirements of the industry.

Cover Photo: Ian Waldie/ Getty Images

The Employer of the Year is….(Renewable Energy)

I have heard it said:

“The [traditional] energy system employs millions of people!”

“Renewables will create massive job losses!”

“Fossil fuels may not be good for the planet, but at least they employ millions!”

and last but not least:

“Green jobs are the miracle that never happened”

Far be it for me to assess whether green jobs were ever meant to be “miraculous”, but I will say that “green jobs”, defined by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as either “jobs in business that produce goods and services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources” or as “jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their company’s production process more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources”, are increasing at unprecedented levels.

capture — Number of Jobs in Renewably Energy, Irena, 2016

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published their annual report detailing employment in the IRENA’s 2016 report, (link here – to learn more about their methodology, I suggest you check it out) estimated total employment in the RE sector to amount to 8.1m people. Adnan Amin, director-general or IRENA commented on the report stating, “The continued job growth in the renewable energy sector is significant because it is in contrast to trends across the energy sector. The increase is being driven by declining RE technology costs and enabling policy frameworks.”

Most of these jobs are in China, Brazil, USA, India, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, France, Bangladesh, and Colombia.

capture1 — Renewable Energy Jobs by Country, Irena, 2016

Jobs in renewable energy increased by 18% from the estimates reported two years ago with a steady regional shift towards Asia.

In 2014, the Solar PV emerged as the largest employer in the energy sector accounting for 2.8 million jobs, an 11% increase from last year, and two-thirds of which were in China. Solar PV grew the most in USA and Japan while decreasing in Europe. Indeed, the global aggregate production of solar panels keeps increasing and pushing further into Asia, with lower costs of installations driving that accelerated growth. Global wind employment crossed the 1m job mark, fueled mainly by deployment in China, Germany, the USA, and Brazil.

Although, it’s good news (mostly) all around, the winner this year is:

🇨🇳Gold Medal: China

China has firmed up to be the leading renewable energy job market in the world, with 3.5m people employed. Domestic deployment and rising solar PV demand solidified that growth at 4% to 1.4m jobs. Chinese Solar PV jobs are focused on manufacturing (with 80%) following by installations and operations. The largest solar water heating technology industry and market are in China since they provide for both domestic and international demand. Half of the global wind jobs are in China, and more than 70% of those are in manufacturing.

Moreover, China is also is a leader in hydropower employment, as they add 75 GW of new projects between 2014-2017. Construction and installation account for 70% of the countries large hydropower employment.

Indeed, China has and installed 65 gigawatts more in renewable energy in 2015, shift the labor force from oil and gas, towards renewables. Now, China employs 3.5m people in renewable energy and only 2.6m in oil and gas, that 35% more people in RE than in oil and gas (coal excluded).

Although the lion’s share of the RE labor force is employed in manufacturing, this growth rate is likely to begin to contract, in spite of growth in technological deployment due to:

market consolidation in favor of large suppliers/ manufacturers resulting in economies of scale;
automation of process will make manufacturing more efficient, which will make it less labor intensive.

The runner up is:

🇺🇸Silver Medal: United States

Renewable energy jobs in the USA have increased at a historic pace, owing to large consumer demand and constantly declining prices of RE, especially solar. The Solar Foundation’s National Solar Jobs Census 2016 found that the solar industry accounts for 2% of all jobs created in the US over the past year, with the absolute number of solar jobs increasing in 44 of the 50 states. As of November 2016, there were 260k solar workers employed in America, “representing a growth rate of 24.5% relative to November 2015” according to the report.

This is great news all round since it signals that solar is receiving investments and creating thousands of high-skilled jobs, ultimately driving growth, strengthening businesses and reducing emissions (pollution) in cities. Moreover, wind recovered from a policy-induced slump in new installations and saw wind jobs rise by 43%.

Moreover, according to the annual U.S Energy Employment Report, published January 2017, more people are employed in solar power last year than in coal, gas, and oil combined. They report found that 43% of the total electric power generation workforce was employed in solar energy while fossil fuels accounted for a mere 22%. The report goes on to say that the US solar installation sector alone employs more than the domestic coal industry. Since 2014, solar installation has created more jobs than oil and gas pipeline construction and crude petroleum and natural gas extraction combined.

sourcesirenausbofstatisticsbloomberg — Source: Department of Energy, BLS, taken from Bloomberg

The electricity mix in the USA is shifting decisively in the direction of renewable energy, driven by the transition from coal-fired power plants, to gas and now, steadily in low-carbon energy sources.

🇧🇷Bronze Medal: Brazil

Employment in RE in Brazil is concentrated in the cultivation and production of biofuels. I am aware that there is a huge debate regarding whether of not biofuels production (especially from sugarcane..etc) is considered a real “green job” but that is an argument for another day, but today, I will be counting them as green jobs.

With 821,000 jobs, Brazil continues to have the largest liquid biofuel workforce by far. Reductions of about 45,000 jobs in the country’s ethanol industry (due to the ongoing mechanization of sugarcane harvesting, even as production rose) were only partially offset by job growth in biodiesel. Biofuel production, especially in a developing country tends to be labor intensive, on account of inefficiency and poor access to technology, which have explained why those working in biofuels in Brazil are just under 1m people.

However, Brazils wind energy sector is growing rapidly, which power capacity expanding from 1 GW in 2010 to 6 GW in 2014. Moreover, while there was one mere wind power equipment manufacturer, there were ten in 2007, indicating the sector is maturing. Most of these jobs are in construction and manufacturing.

Brazil’s solar heating market is expanding strongly in the past decade. In 2013, there were an estimated 41k people employed, between manufacturing and installation.

🇪🇺Consolation prize: European Union

Owing to a mélange of adverse policy conditions, regulatory uncertainty and a sharp decrease in investment, the number of RE jobs in the EU declined from 1.25m to 1.2m. Germany, however, is the euro leader in terms of job, with 271k jobs in RE. This is more than double the runner-up, France, which is ahead of UK, Italy, and Spain. RE employment in France fell by 4%- primarily because solar PV installations dwindled by 45%). We are likely to see a shift, due to Denmark and the UK’s ambitious off-shore wind plans which will (if they go through with them) likely create expansion in the near future. The EU has been suffering consistent defeats against China in terms of lower manufacturing competitiveness and a weaker installations market, leading to a net decrease in solar jobs… for now.

“But Jobs!”

Growing awareness of the harmful effects of GHGs on the environment and on our health, coupled with consumer preferences are pushing investment into renewable energy, leading to logical increases in employment in RE. Conversely, the tumbling price of oil has led to a slowdown of industry expansion (too expensive deep off-shore, arctic projects, and unconventional drilling) and the corresponding reduction in capital expenditure and operational expenditure has had significant effects on the oil and gas labor force.

I do not think that the “But what about the jobs!” argument to be complete without merit. But a growing trend and body of evidence point to the fact that potential job losses in the traditional energy sector can be compensated by green jobs, however, an argument runs in parallel with this reasoning. And that is the fact that energy jobs are geographically and personally specific, meaning you can’t plug a worker out of an oil field in Texas and jettison them into a solar PV role easily. Re-skilling, training, and compensation for job losses are some of the conversations we will have to have in the next few years.

Nevertheless, the writing is on the wall.

Cover picture: Alex Wong, Getty Images

Trend #1: Investment in Renewable Energy 2015

Old critiques, die hard. For the longest time, renewable energy (RE) has been viewed as too expensive and un-scalable, as a luxury energy source, that will not be deployed in developing countries. As a matter of fact, how many times did you hear the criticism, that by diverting investment away from so-called “cheap” fossil fuel energy, we would be depriving developing countries of their right to develop?

The numbers quantifying investments in RE are in! It should be no surprise that RE investment is increasing significantly and the developing world, especially China, is leading the way.

The findings of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investments 2016 confirmed that RE set new records in 2015 for dollar investments, the amount of new capacity added and the relative importance of developing countries in the context of that growth.

Record-breaking uptrend in Renewable Energy Investments

Global investment in RE rose 5% to $285.9 billion from 2014 to 2015, breaking the previous record of $278.5 billion reached in 2011 (FYI that’s double the dollar allocations to new coal and gas generation, which was an estimated $130 billion in 2015) when the famous ‘green stimulus’ programs in German and Italian were in full throttle. The figure below shows that the 2015 investment increased sixfold since 2004 and that investment in RE has not been below $230b since 2010.

GLOBAL NEW INVESTMENT IN RE BY ASSET CLASS, 2004-2015, $BN

global-investment-in-re-asset-class-2004-2015-b — Source: UNEP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

*Asset finance volume adjusts for re-invested equity. Total values include estimates for undisclosed deals.

Over the course of the 12 years shown in the chart, the cumulative RE investment has reached $2.3 trillion.

Moreover, in 2015 some 134GW of RE excluding large hydro were commissioned, equivalent to some 53.6% of all power generation capacity completed in that year – and this is worth mentioning because it is the first time it has represented a majority. Of the renewables total, wind accounted for 62GW installed, and solar photovoltaics 56GW, highest ever figure and sharply up from their 2014 additions of 49GW and 45GW respectively.

Developing Countries Leading the Way

The investment which led to record-breaking levels came from China, which lifted its investment by 17% to $102.9 billion, about 36% of the global total. In the Middle East and Africa, investment was up a total of 58% at $12.5 billion, helped by project development in especially in South Africa and Morocco; and in India, up 22% at $10.2 billion.

More significantly, 2015 was the first year in which investment in RE (excluding large hydro) was higher in developing economies than in developed countries. The figure below shows that the developing world invested $156 billion last year, some 19% up on 2014 and a remarkable 17 times the equivalent figure for 2004, of $9 billion.

INVESTMENT IN RE: DEVELOPED/ DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, 2004-2015, $BN

global-new-investment-in-re-developed-vs-developing — source: UNEP, Bloomberg

The key contributors to this shift from developed to developing are the big three: China, India, and Brazil, who saw an investment rise of 16% to $120.2 billion

A large part of the record-breaking investment in developing countries took place in China. Indeed China has been the single biggest reason for the strong increasing trend for the developing world as a whole since 2004. In spite of low market fundamentals and much talk of decreased investment in RE, China has been a key contributor to these figures. China invested $102.9 billion in 2015, up 17%, representing well over a third of the global total.

Likewise, India enjoyed a second successive year of increasing investment, breaching the $10 billion for the first time since 2011.

Other developing countries, excluding the big three, lifted their investment by 30% last year to an all-time high of $36 billion, some 12x their 2004 investment, the biggest players are:

South Africa also deserves an honorable mention as it’s RE investment is up 329% at $4.5 billion significantly ramping up their solar PV, in the context of their auction program. In June last year, the government in Pretoria launched a tender for an additional 1.8GW for its renewables program. One of the signal deals later in the year was the financing in September of the 100MW Redstone solar thermal project for an estimated $756m, helped by loans from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and Overseas Private Investment Corporation of the US;
Mexico saw a 105% increase at $4 billion, aided by investment from the development bank Nafin for 9 wind projects. Moreover, Mexico is emerging as an important location for bond issues to back renewable energy projects. In November last year, National Financiera issued $500 million worth of five-year bonds to contribute towards the development of nine wind farms with a total capacity of 1.6GW;
Chile saw an increase of 151% higher at $3.4 billion, thanks to a sizable uptrend in solar project financings;
Morocco, Turkey, and Uruguay also saw investment increases in excess of the $1 billion milestone in 2015.

Developed world downward trend (mostly)

In the developed world, however, we are witnessing a downward trend quite consistently, since 2011, when it peaked at $191 billion, some 47% higher than the 2015 outturn. Developed countries invested $130 billion in 2015, down 8% and their lowest figure since 2009. This decline is due to two major factors:

because of the US, where firstly; there was a rush of investment in 2011 as projects and companies tried to catch the Treasury grant and Federal Loan Guarantee programmes before they expired and secondly, the US Supreme Court’s decision in February 2016 to allow all legal objections to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan to be heard before it can be implemented may be deterring investment in 2016.
but much more to do with Europe, where allocations fell by 60% between 2011 and 2015. That big drop was caused by a mix of factors including retroactive cuts in support for existing projects in Spain, Romania and several other countries, an economic downturn in southern Europe that made electricity bills more of a political hot potato, the cut of government subsidies aimed at incentivizing RE in Germany and Italy, and the big fall in the cost of PV panels over recent years.Italy, in particular, saw renewable energy investment of just under $1 billion, down 21% on 2014 and far below the peak of $31.7 billion seen during the PV boom of 2011.

Retroactive cuts to feed-in tariffs really weaken support for solar energy investments. Spain, scene of particularly painful retroactive revenue cuts imposed by the government during the 2011-14 period, and the end of all support for new projects, saw investments of just $573 million in 2014. This was slightly up on the previous year but miles below the $23.6 billion peak of 2008.

But it’s not all bad in Europe, especially since the UK has not seen a significant slowdown in RE investments in recent years, and is actually pushing in the opposite direction. Moreover, in spite of the fact that offshore wind in the North Sea has seen massive investments amounting to $17b, Europe’s aggregate RE investment is still in decline.