Plunging prices and booming investments are beginning to reshape the energy market, according to a couple of reports that were released this week. A report produced on behalf of Bloomberg says that investments in renewable energy have gone up by roughly a third over the last year, to $211 billion. Led by China's renewable push, the world is now on a trajectory that will see its investments in renewable electricity surpass those in fossil fuels within a year or two. As a result of these investments, the US is now producing more renewable energy than nuclear power.

First, renewable investments. Bloomberg's New Energy Finance group has collaborated with the UN Environment Programme and the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management to produce a global overview of funding for renewable power. This includes the obvious—financing for the construction of utility-scale projects and home installations—and some non-obvious funding, like merger and acquisition activity.

Any way you look at things, the numbers make it clear just how significant renewables have become. Excluding hydropower, renewables made up about 35 percent of the power capacity added worldwide last year, and produced over five percent of the total power. Investments directed toward this new capacity (excluding things like mergers) hit $187 billion, and are closing in fast on the spending on fossil fuel power plants, cutting the gap in spending to $31 billion, down from $74 billion. At that pace, we'll be investing more in renewables either this year or next.

Renewables made up 35 percent of the power capacity added worldwide last year.

Part of the reason is cost. Although wind turbines are very mature technology now, their cost per MW still fell by 18 percent over the last two years; photovoltaics have dropped a staggering 60 percent in that time. "Further improvements in the levelised cost of energy for solar, wind and other technologies lie ahead, posing a bigger and bigger threat to the dominance of fossil-fuel generation sources in the next few years," according to the report's authors.

That will be a major transition, but another one took place already this past year: more financing went to utility-scale projects in the developing economies than in the industrialized ones. That change is driven by China, where investments were up by about 30 percent, reaching $49 billion.

The US, despite seeing a jump of 60 percent, still trailed far behind, with only about $25 billion in these investments. That would be enough to put the US in second place, at least until small-scale distributed solar is considered. Rooftop and similar capacity boomed in Germany after several years of government-driven investment in larger projects. Small-scale solar now constitutes the majority of Germany's investment, and is sufficient to push it into second place globally. A similar trend was apparent in other European countries, including Italy, France, and the Czech Republic. These installations are also enough to push solar energy much closer to wind power when it comes to total investments.

Renewables are also becoming a major factor outside of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Latin American investments tripled to clear $6 billion, and other Asian nations saw 30 percent growth to $4 billion. But the big story is Africa, led by Egypt and Kenya, where investments were up nearly five-fold, reaching $3.6 billion. "Solar telecommunications towers," the report argues, "are becoming the technology of choice, not a poor substitute for diesel or other fossil-fuel power options."

These trends have driven a major milestone in the US. The US Energy Information Agency performs a monthly review of the national energy economy, and its most recent report (for June) held a bit of a surprise: renewable energy has passed nuclear for the first three months this year. Electricity generated by nuclear plants has held steady at about 8,400 quadrillion BTUs for the last several years, while renewables have experienced strong growth, reaching just over 8,000 Quads last year.

This figure includes biomass, which has seen significant growth over the last decade, as has wind. So far, solar is barely registering, but several major utility-scale projects are in the works, both photovoltaic and concentrated solar, so that may change before too long.

Developed economies still have a substantial lead when it comes to R&D investments, which are helping to drive the costs of solar (and other technologies) downwards. Government policies in these nations have also fostered increased production, which is pushing the costs down even further. But the rapid growth of renewables outside these economies show that globalization has ensured that the benefits are spreading rapidly to other countries, where renewables are enabling off-the-grid operation of key infrastructure.

Listing image by Image: NASA