Global clean energy investment down 18% to US$288b in 2016

London

CLEAN energy investment worldwide fell by 18 per cent to US$287.5 billion last year due to sharp falls in renewable technology prices and less spending on projects by large markets China and Japan, research showed on Thursday.

Chinese investment in renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar, was US$87.8 billion last year, 26 per cent lower than an all-time high of US$119 billion in 2015, while Japanese investment was 43 per cent lower at US$22.8 billion, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) said in an annual report. "After years of record-breaking investment driven by some of the world's most generous feed-in tariffs, China and Japan are cutting back on building new large-scale projects and shifting towards digesting the capacity they have already put in place,"said Justin Wu, head of Asia for BNEF.