U.S. now leads in attractiveness to clean energy investors
The ranking report published by EY LLP, a global consulting service, cites President Obama’s launch of the Clean Power Plan as boosting investor confidence in the country by sending a “strong message” of a shift to a low-carbon economy. The United States displaced China at the top of EY’s renewable energy country attractiveness index for the first time in a year.
India pushed Germany out of third place, which analysts attributed to state and market reforms in India, as well as an increase in foreign investment. Brazil and Chile moved up into eighth and ninth place, respectively, following initiatives to push renewable energy projects, especially solar.
The United Kingdom also fell from eighth place in June to 11th, an unusually large drop. The report said the U.K. government had sentenced the renewable energy industry in the country to “death by a thousand cuts,” and investor confidence had collapsed because of the end of subsidies for onshore wind power and large-scale solar projects over the summer.
“The U.K. has historically been a safe harbor for investment because of political stability and all sorts of good reasons,” said Ben Warren, the energy corporate finance leader at EY. “We’ve entered a really weird phase where we’ve almost got government energy policy being set in a vacuum. … Investors looking at the U.K. are scratching their heads”