Tokyo

THE green-energy industry is starting to feel the impact of an efficiency drive sweeping Asia, where governments from China to Japan are scaling back subsidies to constrain a boom in installations.

Investment in clean-power technologies in Asia slumped 41 per cent to US$70.1 billion in the first nine months of the year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which hosts a conference on the issue in Shanghai starting Tuesday. It's the first decline in the modern history of an industry that's barely a decade old. The ability of those plants to produce electricity is on track to surge 13 per cent, the research group said.