To keep temperature from rising no more than 2°C compared to the preindustrial era as they committed to, world countries will have to invest nearly $12,100 billion in renewable energies by 2040 or $848 billion per year.

This sum will be used to establish wind, solar, geothermal and biomass power stations of an overall capacity of 12,500 GW. This was revealed in the “Mapping the gap” study conducted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Ceres. Investments will gradually increase until 2015 before taking a downward movement. However, they will still exceed current investments in renewable energies.

Achieving this goal also requires massive investments to be made in low-carbon energies such as hydroelectricity and nuclear. $5.874 billion are to be injected in these sectors over the next 25 years. Overall, $18,007 billion will be needed to finance low-carbon energies, new or old ones.

The report forecasts, in that case, a gradual fall in price of energy from $1.74 per MW now to $1.03 MW by 2040.

The report also reviews the Business as Usual (BaU) scenario whereby no additional measure is implemented. In this case, investments in solar, wind, geothermal and biomass will be 75% lower to what has been planned to maintain temperature below 2°C. Only $6,900 billion will be invested by 2040.

Gwladys Johnson