$1 Trillion Green Investment Matches Fossil Fuels For The First Time.

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• $1 Trillion Green Investment Matches Fossil Fuels For The First Time.

• Meme Of The Week.

• Clean Energy Race Sparks More Ambitious Climate Policies.

• Quick And Clean Weekly Bites.

$1 Trillion Green Investment Matches Fossil Fuels For The First Time.

For the first time, the world invested as much money into replacing fossil fuels as it spent on producing oil, gas, and coal, according to an analysis from BloombergNEF.

Global investments in the clean energy transition hit $1.1 trillion in 2022, roughly equal to the amount invested in fossil fuel production, the research firm said in its “Energy Transition Investment Trends 2023” report. Never before has the amount spent on switching to renewable power, electric cars and new energy sources like hydrogen topped $1 trillion.

While the amount represents a 31% jump from 2021, it’s still just a fraction of what’s needed to slash greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming. BNEF estimates annual investments in the transition must triple for the rest of this decade to give the world a shot at reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

Solar and wind power accounted for the biggest chunk of 2022 investments, reaching $495 billion, a 17% increase from the previous year. But electric vehicles came in close behind, with $466 billion, and the amount invested in them worldwide is growing far faster, at 54%. Nearly half of all global energy transition investments — $546 billion — were in China, while the US came in second at $141 billion.

Meme Of The Week

Clean Energy Race Sparks More Ambitious Climate Policies.

Climate policy announcements from the past three months are becoming more ambitious, and most aim for a rise in global temperatures of no more than 1.8C (3.1F), a new assessment finds.

The Inevitable Policy Response (IPR), which describes itself as a climate transition forecasting consortium, has been tracking government and private sector climate policies since a United Nations climate summit in November 2021 and weighs the announcements according to their credibility and ambition.

The three-month period from October to January was the most ambitious yet, the group said on 18th January after a wave of green subsidies came out of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the United States and the European Union planned to boost cleaner energy sources.

Those initiatives have provided a “new catalyst for climate action”, IPR said, with China to lead on clean energy.

 Quick And Clean Weekly Bites.

• New Eurostat data shows that solar, wind and other ‘Clean’ sources contributed 21.8 percent to the EU’s total energy consumption. Although this was a 0.3 percent drop in 2020, the report shows that Europe’s energy infrastructure is still heading in the right direction, spurred on by recent global events. Last month, the International Energy Agency revealed that the world is set to add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the last 20. Link.

• New research has named three small interventions that could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation and may be the fastest way to drive global action. These positive tipping points could have a snowball effect in a good way, drastically cutting carbon emissions in some of the world’s most polluting sectors and giving us new "plausible grounds" for hope. Link.

• Paris commuters took advantage of the capital's newly expanded network of bicycle lanes to bypass public transport disruptions resulting from a nationwide strike. Bike lane traffic has often surged during recent strikes. The last Paris metro strike on 10 November boosted bike lane usage by 80 percent from the average daily use that month. In a bid to make Paris a 'cycling city' and move towards carbon neutrality, Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo has invested more than €150 million into new bike infrastructure in recent years. Link.