Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?

The Pew Charitable Trusts report Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race? documents the dawning of a new worldwide industry – clean energy – which has experienced investment growth of 230 percent since 2005. Accounting for more than 90 percent of worldwide finance and investment, G-20 countries dominate the clean energy landscape. As the country profiles in this report demonstrate, virtually all G-20 countries have seen investments grow by more than 50 percent over the last five years. China, which has set ambitious targets for wind, biomass and solar energy, for the first time took the top spot within the G-20 and globally for overall clean energy finance and investment in 2009. The United States slipped to second place.

Investment leader China may double its solar power capacity goal amid rising doubts about the safety of nuclear power in the wake of the Japanese crisis. China, the world’s largest solar panel exporter, is likely to boast 10 gigawatts (gW) of solar power capacity by 2015, up from the current 1 gW and a doubling of its existing target.