Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2020

This report, commissioned by UNEP’s Economy Division in cooperation with Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance and produced in collaboration with BloombergNEF, shows that renewable energy capacity, excluding large hydro, grew by a record 184 gigawatts (GW) in 2019.

This was 20GW, or 12%, more than new capacity added in 2018. Yet the 2019 dollar investment was only 1% higher, at $282.2 billion. Meanwhile, the all-in cost of electricity continues to fall for wind and solar, thanks to technology improvements, economies of scale and fierce competition in auctions.

Costs for electricity from new solar photovoltaic plants in the second half of 2019 were 83% lower than a decade earlier.