What Happened to Green Energy?

The Inconvenient Truth seems to be that investments in Clean Energy have fallen lately. And that trend is going to continue for quite a while. Investments in green energy fell by 14% in the third quarter of 2013 compared to the previous quarter. Only a Christmas shopping spree in clean energy can prevent 2013 from being the second year in a row with falling investments in renewables and energy-smart technologies.

The major challenge is that most Clean Energy Technologies are still in an early face of their product life cycle. Heavy investments are needed for Research & Development and the rewards for investors when the product goes to market are far from guaranteed. This is why government subsidies are necessary to mature this market.
In the US President Barack Obama has done what he could to help the green cause. This has brought good results in the form of employment and more environmentally safe technologies being installed (electricity generation from wind and solar power increased nearly 71 and 40.3 percent between 2008 and 2010) . But unfortunately the costs have been too high.
According to figures from The Institute for Energy Research $34.4 Billion have been invested and 2,298 permanent jobs have been created. An average of $14.49 million of tax payers’ money per job. With the recent budget crises in mind it’s probably safe to bet that the US will not be ramping up its Clean Energy investments any time soon.

And the same picture shows up all over Europe with Germany the most notable country to limit and/or withdraw subsidies. The government subsidies for installing solar panels used to be so generous in Germany that nobody could afford to not have solar energy. But since job creation has halted even governments have to be efficient with how they’re allocating funds.

To end on a positive note, though, if the light at the end of the tunnel is fueled by green energy it should still be burning when government subsidies are ready to return.