Clean energy investments: 2009 is going to be a tough year
Figures put together by research firm New Energy Finance, tracking venture and debt financing and mergers and acquisition activity for the first quarter of 2009, will show a big fall in activity compared to the same quarter in 2008.
The findings, which will be released later this week, are not surprising. As previously reported here, the credit freeze has all but dried up funding supporting the construction of clean energy projects. This includes tax equity financing, which were widely used in boom times, (2007- to – 2008), by wind developers, who in exchange for project financing would swap the tax credit with financial institutions with large enough profits to benefit from these tax shelters.
But now, as Greenwire reports, “the big boys no longer have cash to bankroll projects or the means to pull the profits to get credits, so the tax-equity space has turned into a financial dead zone.“
Things are being done to kick start funding. Washington is putting together a government grant system that would see clean energy projects be directly financed by the Treasury Department. The grant are part of the recently passed stimulus package. GER has written about theme here. Treasury expected to distribute the first of these much awaited funds soon.
But with financing for renewable energy remaining “as scarce as white heather on both sides of the Atlantic” the hope, New Energy Finance writes, is for: “G20 leaders gathering in London on Thursday to discuss action to drag the world economy out of recession… [and that] the… meeting might push other countries into taking similarly decisive moves to trigger investment in clean energy.”
