The world in 2016 saw a record amount of new renewable capacity, Bloomberg New Energy Finance reports in its recent Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2017. The total came to 138.5GW, up from 127.5GW in the previous year, even though the cost of new investment in renewables (excluding large hydro) fell by 23% to $241.6 billion, the lowest total since 2013, thanks to falling unit costs. Bloomberg calls the effect “more for less.”
That figure, 138.5GW, was equivalent to 55% of all the generating capacity added globally, the highest proportion in any year to date. That proportion represented 11.3% in 2016, up from 10.3% in 2015. Several non-EU countries saw bids for solar and wind win at tariffs “that would have seemed inconceivably low only a few years ago,” the report says. Nor does availability of finance seem to be a bottleneck to investment in renewables in most countries, with many investors evidently regarding the various renewables technologies as mature.
Hybrid installations are increasingly common, to make use of shared land, grid connections and maintenance, and to reduce intermittency. Bloomberg counts some 5.6GW of such hybrids built or under development worldwide, including hydro-solar, wind-solar, PV-solar thermal, solar thermal-geothermal and biomass-geothermal.
Developed economies held a slight edge over the developing world in total investment. The report is available at http://www.fs-unep-centre.org.