In what has to be the best news of the new century for renewable energy sources like solar power, wind and biofuels, the UN came out with a new report on June 4 showing that, for the first time in history, investment in renewable energies topped fossil fuel investment, based on data taken from 2008.
This is surprising in view of the fact that the abysmal economy of 2008 saw stocks in general running for cover and renewable energy stocks taking double-digit losses in some cases. In fact, according to a report by the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, which tracks the ups and downs of 88 clean energy stocks worldwide, "green" energy took a dive from January to November of 2008 of more than 70 percent.
Fortunately, President Barack Obama's focus on renewable energy technologies, and recent incentives like the Department of Energy offering of $107.6 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for improved solar technologies, sent renewable stocks up again in 2009, recovering 45 percent of their value, according to New Energy Finance, which drew up the report for the UN.
On hearing the good news, Achin Steiner, the executive director of the UN's Environment Programme, said the figures are a "clear indication" that renewable energy technologies have reached that tipping point where they become as important as, or more important than, coal, oil and gas.
The biggest margins of investment came from developing countries like China and India, but smaller countries like Kenya and Angola also saw their fair share of gains.
The biggest winners were solar (at $33.5 billion) and wind (at about $52 billion), with biofuels taking a backseat at about $17 billion as a result of their being implicated, in 2007 and 2008, in global and national food-price hikes.
Europe was the biggest gainer, with $50 billion invested in projects across five countries (Spain, Germany, the UK, France and Denmark), while the U.S. fell 8 percent from its huge renewable energy gains of 2007, which saw solar stocks jumping to more than 150 percent of their pre-recessionary value.
To the United States credit, however, a report earlier in the week showed American laboratories leading the world in cutting-edge renewable energy technologies and environmental research.
The study focused on 3,000 research institutions and universities around the world, and saw NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland leading in solar cell technology from 2003 to 2007.
Other, less surprising, winners included Harvard, Caltech, and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado. A surprising winner in the category of fuel cells was Penn State.
In all, nine U.S. laboratories or schools placed among the global top 25. But James Pringle of Thomson Reuters warned that these kinds of analyses can be misleading, and added that no single publication has the final word on which entities have displayed the greatest competence in their fields.
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