Triple The $$$ Needed To Stop Climate Changing

The Energy 202: Clean energy investment needs to triple to halt catastrophic warming, finds new report

Dino Grandoni, October 31, 2017 (Washington Post)

“…[T]o keep the planet under 2 degrees Celsius warmer compared to pre-industrial levels, the global economy needs to triple its annual investment in low-emissions technology — from $750 billion per year between 2010 and 2015 to $2.3 trillion per year going forward until 2040 [according to Derisking Decarbonization: Making Green Energy Investments Blue Chip. The] cost of alternative energy technologies — in particular, solar panels — has plummeted in recent years, [but] another crucial resource needed to deploy renewables — financial capital — has proven to be, unlike sunlight, exhaustible…In the first half of the decade, private institutional investors — which include pension, mutual and sovereign wealth funds alongside billionaires — invested a total of $3.4 trillion in the world economy per year, the analysis found. That means at current investment levels, two out of every three dollars invested per year would need to go toward clean energy to halt catastrophic warming — a tall order for which investors seem to have little appetite…[And pension] and mutual funds, which together held more than half of all assets among institutional investors in 2015, tend to invest money conservatively because they, unlike high-net-worth individuals, aim to protect the retirement accounts of middle-class workers…” click here for more

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