South Africa’s solar investments stood out in a slow Q1 for renewable investment, according to research by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
Q1 2015 was a significant drop from Q4 2014 and low in comparison to Q1 2014. The investments in renewables totalled around US$59.3billion, with many areas investing less in solar than before.
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In Europe, investment went down 30% compared to the first quarter of 2014 to US$9.7 billion, and China was down 24% to US$11 billion.
The US increased its investments by 2% up to US$9.6 billion. Brazil had a 62% fall to US$1.1 billion.
South Africa, however, invested around US$3.1 billion which, according to BNEF, is a significant increase from the first quarter in 2014.
Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board at BNEF, stated: “The big question, of course, is whether and how hard clean energy investment would be hit by the slump in oil and gas prices. These figures indicate the answer is not much. We said in January that we thought 2015 would struggle to match last year’s dollar investment total, because of exchange rate moves.”
According to Luke Mills, an analyst at BNEF: “Since 2012, South Africa has emerged as one of the most important centres for clean energy investment, as it seeks to expand power capacity and take advantage of its sunshine and wind resources. The first quarter saw the financing of a series of large projects in solar thermal, wind and PV that won through in the latest round of the country’s auction programme.”
BNEF’s figures show that Q1 solar investment has increased by 7% since last year to US$31.8 billion.