planted city

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Despite the turbulence in the global economy, the world invested a record $251 billion in clean energy last year, with the US streaking ahead of China in green spending and boosting confidence among climate action advocates.

New figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance showed the US spent $54 billion on clean energy, retaking the No. 1 spot it lost to China in 2009 and defying assumptions that the world’s largest economy is flagging on greenhouse gas reductions.

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”Despite financial crisis, and even though carbon pricing schemes haven’t developed quite the way they were expected to … investment keeps growing, which reflects the world view of many major economists that clean energy is going to be the major industrial driver of economic growth this century,” said Kobad Bhavnagri, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s lead clean energy analyst in Australia.

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The indications of a rise in global investment in clean energy follows the pact by major greenhouse-emitting countries in Durban last month on a road map that would lead to a global climate change deal by 2015.

Erwin Jackson, deputy CEO of the Climate Institute, said: ”There are all these myths of the world not acting on climate change. All you have to do is follow the money.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Bloomberg)