Ac­cord­ing to In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency (IEA) da­ta, the world in­vest­ed more than US$2 tril­lion in clean en­er­gy last year, al­most twice as much as it did in fos­sil fu­els. This pushed to­tal en­er­gy in­vest­ment above US$3 tril­lion.

The in­vest­ment in clean en­er­gy and in­fra­struc­ture has ac­cel­er­at­ed since 2020, and spend­ing on re­new­able pow­er, grids and stor­age is now high­er than to­tal spend­ing on oil, gas, and coal. The ma­jor­i­ty of the clean en­er­gy in­vest­ments came from new re­new­able en­er­gy projects, but there have al­so been in­vest­ments in­to ar­eas such as grid up­grades, bat­tery stor­age, nu­clear, low-car­bon fu­els and elec­tric ve­hi­cles, which the IEA in­cludes as clean en­er­gy in­vest­ments in its cal­cu­la­tions.

Pow­er sec­tor in­vest­ment in so­lar pho­to­volta­ic (PV) tech­nol­o­gy ex­ceed­ed US$500 bil­lion, sur­pass­ing all oth­er gen­er­a­tion sources com­bined.

So­lar pan­el costs have de­creased by 30 per cent over the last two years, re­turn­ing to the long-term down­ward trend af­ter a pe­ri­od of in­creas­ing prices in the af­ter­math of the glob­al pan­dem­ic and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions. Prices for min­er­als and met­als cru­cial for en­er­gy tran­si­tions have al­so sharply dropped, es­pe­cial­ly the met­als re­quired for bat­ter­ies. So­lar re­mains cen­tral to the pow­er sec­tor’s trans­for­ma­tion. In 2023, each dol­lar in­vest­ed in wind and so­lar PV yield­ed 2.5 times more en­er­gy out­put than a dol­lar spent on the same tech­nolo­gies a decade pri­or.

As so­lar projects in­creased so too did in­vest­ment in grid stor­age, which made up about 20 per cent of en­er­gy in­vest­ment last year.

En­er­gy-ef­fi­cien­cy in­vest­ment has been grow­ing since 2020 and in 2024 there was US$669 bil­lion in in­vest­ments.

While this trend is en­cour­ag­ing, mar­kets for clean en­er­gy tech­nol­o­gy have been un­cer­tain in 2025. Shift­ing pol­i­cy po­si­tions by ma­jor gov­ern­ments and un­cer­tain­ty over eco­nom­ic growth, trade and sup­ply chains has damp­ened ex­cite­ment in the in­dus­try.

What is clear is that while cap­i­tal in­vest­ments in fos­sil fu­els have been on a down­ward trend in the past decade, en­er­gy in­vest­ment as a whole is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than it was in 2015.

This high­lights the ever-in­creas­ing glob­al de­mand for en­er­gy.