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Emerging clean energy technology investment trends

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 382–385 (2017)Cite this article

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Early-stage capital providers and clean energy technology incubators are supporting a new wave of innovations focused on end-use efficiency and demand control. This wave complements expanding investments in supply technologies required for electricity sector decarbonization.

The electricity sector is the single largest contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions, representing 25% of the global total1. As such, this industry's decarbonization pace is pivotal to achieving the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 °C by 2100. However, attaining this target means global emissions must peak by 2020 and rapidly decrease thereafter2.

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Figure 1: Trends in wave 1 versus wave 2 early-stage capital investment, firm formation and business incubator support.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Anosova, D. Grueneich, B. Hartman, J. Koomey, M. Meinshausen, T. S. Schmidt, I. Strebulaev, M. Wara, and J. Wiseman for their helpful feedback. Thanks to S. Mancuso for the data analysis. A.B. received funding from an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. A. Bumpus is at the School of Geography, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne, 221 Bouverie Street, Parkville, Victoria 3053, Australia,

    A. Bumpus

  2. S. Comello is at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA,

    S. Comello

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  1. A. Bumpus
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Correspondence to A. Bumpus or S. Comello.

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Bumpus, A., Comello, S. Emerging clean energy technology investment trends. Nature Clim Change 7, 382–385 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3306

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