Green energy "gold rush" revs up, investment jumps 60 percent in 1 year

UNITED NATIONS — Global investors plowed $148 billion into new wind, solar and other alternative-energy assets last year, in what the United Nations describes as a "green-energy gold rush" gaining speed the past several years.

The spike in investment — 60 percent above the $92.6 billion spent on such projects in 2006 — reflects rising concerns over climate change and energy prices, U.N. officials said in a report Tuesday. In 2005, alternative energy drew $58.5 billion in new money.

An additional $56 billion changed hands on mergers and acquisitions involving alternative energy last year, another sign the "clean-energy" industry is maturing in the eyes of investors, U.N. Undersecretary-General Achim Steiner said.

Steiner, who heads the U.N. Environment Program, said the agency's report on global trends in sustainable-energy investment indicates a "green-energy gold rush is attracting legions of modern-day prospectors."

Wind energy led last year, drawing $50 billion in new investments, a more than 40 percent rise from 2006, according to the report. Solar power was the fastest-growing sector, rising almost 90 percent to $28 billion.

That doesn't mean the world is close to giving up oil. But Steiner said the pace of investment in renewable energy and efficiency is remarkable because it comes despite the broader turmoil in financial and credit markets.

"With world temperatures and fossil-fuel prices climbing higher, it is increasingly obvious ... that the transition to a low-carbon society is both a global imperative and an inevitability," he said.

Most of the new money flowed into Europe, followed by the United States, the report said. But it noted there is growing interest in green technologies in China, India and Brazil, economies that have become major emitters of greenhouse gases.

Chinese solar companies, for instance, raised $2.5 billion last year from U.S. and European equity-capital markets. Brazil has become the world's largest renewable-energy market because of long-established hydropower and biofuel industries.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said last week that global energy demand is expected to grow 50 percent in the next 20 years and oil prices could reach $186 a barrel from the current ones of about $141. It predicted the steepest increases in energy use will come in China and other developing economies, including some in the Mideast East and Africa, where energy demand is expected to be 85 percent greater in 2030 than today.