Anja von Moltke, Head of the Trade, Policy and Planning Unit at UNEP, discusses China's flourishing South-South trade in renewables.
This report presents the results of the testing of the GBEP indicators in Indonesia. The testing provided Indonesia with an understanding of how to establish the means of a long-term, periodic monitoring of its domestic bioenergy sector based on the GBEP indicators.
This case study presents a discussion on the possibilities of implementing and using energy accounts in developing countries as a complement to traditional energy balances and statistics, which is particularly applicable in Central American countries.
Renewable energy deployment remains an important issue. Generation of electricity and heat from renewable energy (RE) sources reduces the emission of greenhouse gases, provides energy access in remote areas, and diversifies fossil-fuel reliant energy supply, increasing energy security. As such RE deployment creates environmental and social value. Increasingly, RE deployment also contributes to employment and the emergence of an economic sector which is participating in global competition. The question for decision makers in industrialized countries as well as in emerging economies and developing countries is: How can economic value be generated from RE and how can this process be supported by value enabling policies? This study is set out to offer/develop an analytic framework oriented toward identifying opportunities for value creation along the entire RE value chain; to identify and define RE value creation policies and discuss possibilities for strategic policy interventions to enhance RE value creation; and to deepen the analysis with lessons learnt from the development of RE and other sectors.
The authors find that from an international perspective, there is strong evidence that green investments are significantly different from SRI investments in terms of financial performance and underlying firm characteristics. Green equities outperformed SRI equities between 2003 and 2007, whereas they underperformed between 2008 and 2012 with absolute multi-factor alphas of more than 1 per cent per month in both directions. Green portfolios mainly contain stocks of low quality with weak business models that are highly capital-demanding but unprofitable, whereas SRI portfolios are principally characterized by stocks with well-conceived and profitable business models. The authors suggest that green investments can be considered as a sector bet on the renewable energy industry shaped by massive governmental subsidies during the mid-2000s.
This report, part of a new series by IRENA, explores how renewable energy is financed, produced, distributed and consumed, and will chart the changing relationships it is bringing about between states, corporations and individuals.
This first volume focuses upon the power sector. It tells a story – about the trends driving this change, how the technology is evolving, who is financing it, and the wider benefits it will bring. Finally, it examines what an energy system powered by renewables might look like and how policy makers can further support the transformation.