Investment in clean energy drops 17% as China, US scale back

Bloomberg

Clean-energy investment fell 17 percent in the first quarter, keeping pace with last year’s decline, as the US and China both scaled back support for wind and solar farms.
The $53.6 billion funneled into projects such as renewable energy, efficiency and electric cars during the first three months of the year marked the lowest investment for the quarter since 2013, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. A surge in financing for large offshore wind projects at the start of last year wasn’t repeated in 2017. Governments in the biggest markets for renewables are slashing subsidies for new projects, reflecting a plunge in the cost of photovoltaics and wind turbines.
At the same time, bright spots for the industry were marked by a $1.4 billion share sale by Tesla Inc. and $650 million for an Enel SpA solar project in Mexico that may be the biggest plant of its kind. Germany and France also boosted investment. Brazil and India declined.
“It was a relatively quiet first quarter for global investment, but it’s too early to assume that 2017 as a whole will be lower than last year,” said Abraham Louw, analyst at BNEF. Tesla had both a secondary share sale and convertible debt issue in the first quarter, the London-based research arm of Bloomberg LP said in a statement on Tuesday. That boosted investment by 215 percent in the industry from public markets to $2.1 billion.
“Tesla continues to plow ahead with its ambitious plans for ramping up manufacturing of the Model 3,” said Colin McKerracher, an analyst at BNEF. “If they achieve anywhere near their 2017-18 production targets, the impacts on the auto sector would be profound. Tesla are rolling some big dice here.”