Asia-Pacific countries to invest up to US$250b in solar and wind projects

This is due to the increasing threat of climate change.

PwC reported that major Asia-Pacific countries may invest up to US$250b in utility-scale solar and wind projects by 2025.

According to PwC, climate change has driven an increase in renewable energy (RE) investments among Asia-Pacific countries, with a total amount of US$114.8b RE investments in 2016. This accounts for almost half (47%) of the total RE investments worldwide.

It is easier to adopt RE since the cost of implementing and maintaining RE assets has been going down, with solar and wind RE technologies falling steadily in capital costs, PwC said.

Mark Rathbone, Asia Pacific Capital Projects and Infrastructure Leader, PwC Singapore, added: “Climate change and environmental damage is at the forefront of business leaders’ minds worldwide, coming in top ten in our most recent Global CEO survey. Coupling that with the reducing costs associated with RE, there is a strong economic case for RE both globally and in Asia-Pacific.”

Here’s more from PwC:

Many governments in Asia have ramped up their efforts to increase the use of RE in the overall energy mix, with RE targets being significantly higher in some countries when compared to existing capacity. Existing industry forecasts of RE in megawatt (MW) showed that leading countries India (145,929 MW) and Japan (84,040 MW) were more likely to invest in RE by 2025, way ahead of their Asia-Pacific counterparts such as Thailand (8,625 MW), Vietnam (856 MW) and the Philippines (5401MW)2.