Sept. 8 – China overtook the United States for the first time to claim the sole top spot in Ernst & Young’s quarterly renewable energy country attractiveness index, effectively crowning the emerging Asian superpower the world’s most worthwhile market for green technology investment.
The United States had previously topped the index since 2006, but strong government resolve together with good infrastructure and a robust market has aided the Asian nation in its drive to become a global leader in the renewable energy sector.
“We would expect to see China retaining a dominant position,” Ben Warren, Ernst & Young’s environment and energy infrastructure advisory leader, said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg. “China has all the benefits of capital, government will and it’s a massive market.”
In particular, Ernst & Young ranked China as the most attractive market for investment in wind and solar projects in the report. Beijing is planning to launch 90,000 megawatts worth of wind farms by 2015 and is currently looking at developing 13 solar power projects in the country’s western region which will have a combined capacity of some 280 megawatts.
As part of China’s efforts to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 45 percent of 2005 levels by 2020, the government has announced that it will try and reach an installed capacity of 300 gigawatts of hydro, 70 gigawatts of nuclear, 100 gigawatts of wind, and 20 gigawatts of solar capacity by the end of the decade.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission’s vice minister Zhang Guobao commented that wind energy generation capacity in China is expected to grow at an annual rate of 36 percent by the end of the year.
Ernst & Young began generating the quarterly index in 2003, taking into account access to capital, access to the power grid, availability of land, planning barriers, and regulations when ranking the 27 countries included in the list. Germany, India, Italy and the United Kingdom rounded out list’s top ranked nations after China and the United States.
Related Reading
India, China Clean Tech Comparison
A Green Leap Forward
The Future of Greentech in China
