New investment in wind, solar and other clean energy projects in emerging markets dropped to $133bn in 2018 from $169bn in 2017, largely due to a slowdown in China, according to research by BloombergNEF.
The annual Climatescope survey covering 104 emerging markets found that investment in new wind, solar, and other non-large hydro renewables projects in China fell to $86bn last year from $122bn in 2017, BloombergNEF said.
The decline was not confined to China, with inflows to clean energy projects in India and Brazil slipping $2.4bn and $2.7bn, respectively from the prior year.
Overall, declining costs for solar and wind played a considerable factor in the fall in absolute dollar investment in emerging economies, the research found.
But excluding China, India and Brazil, clean energy investment jumped to $34bn in 2018 from $30bn in 2017.
Most notably, Vietnam, South Africa, Mexico and Morocco led the rankings with a combined investment of $16bn last year.
Excluding China alone, new clean energy installations in emerging markets grew 21% to achieve a new record, with 36GW commissioned in 2018, up from 30GW in 2017.
This is twice the clean energy capacity added in 2015 and three times the capacity installed in 2013, BloombergNEF said.
It also noted that, while the number of new clean power-generating plants completed stayed flat year-to-year, the volume of power derived from coal surged to a new high.
The findings suggest that developing nations are moving toward cleaner power but not nearly fast enough to limit global CO2 emissions or the consequences of climate change, BloombergNEF said.
“The majority of new power-generating capacity added in developing nations in 2018 came from wind and solar, for instance,” it said.
“But the majority of power to be produced from the overall fleet of power plants added in 2018 will come from fossil sources and emit CO2.”
Climatescope project manager for BloombergNEF Luiza Demoro said: “This year’s Climatescope headline results are undeniably disappointing.
“However, apart from the very largest nations, we did see some important and positive developments, in terms of new policies, investment, and deployment.”
Actual coal-fired power generated and consumed in developing countries jumped to 6.9 thousand terawatt-hours in 2018, up from 6.4 thousand TWh in 2017.
Across the 104 emerging markets surveyed in Climatescope, coal accounted for 47% of all generation, BloombergNEF said.
But, it added, despite the spike in coal-fired generation, the pace of new coal capacity added to grids in developing nations is slowing.
New construction of coal-fired power plants fell to the lowest level in a decade in 2018.
After peaking at 84GW of new capacity added in 2015, coal project completions plummeted to 39GW in 2018. China accounted for approximately two thirds of this decline.
BloombergNEF Americas head Ethan Zindler said: “The transition from coal toward cleaner sources in developing nations is underway. But like trying to turn a massive oil tanker, it takes time.”