Copenhagen Failure Defied by $200 Billion in Green Investments

[bananas]

Copenhagen Failure Defied by $200 Billion in Green Investments
By Jim Efstathiou Jr.

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Renewable-energy investment may climb to a record $200 billion worldwide next year as companies from Hong Kong’s CLP Holdings Ltd. to American Electric Power Co. start projects that don’t depend on a new climate-change treaty.

Private and public spending on technology such as solar panels and wind turbines will rise about 50 percent from $130 billion this year and top the previous high of $155 billion in 2008, according to Michael Liebreich, chairman of London-based New Energy Finance, a consulting firm whose data is used by the United Nations and Deutsche Bank AG.

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“Country by country, state by state, regulations will continue to spur demand independent of what might happen in Copenhagen,” said Joe Muscat, director of clean technology at New York-based Ernst & Young LLP.

Worldwide, 250 climate-change regulations were enacted from July 2008 to February, including 54 in the U.S. and 25 in China, Ernst & Young said in a Nov. 17 report. More than 30 U.S. states require utilities to include renewable energy in their power portfolios.

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A treaty “would certainly be helpful, but it is not going to stop capital from being put to work,” McDermott, managing partner of New York-based Greentech said. “Technological progress and the ability to scale and lower costs are surprising everybody in the industry.”

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Good article.