To answer your question, it is because renewable energy-based projects are green, clean, sustainable and natural. Today, renewable energy generates 26% of the world’s electricity. By 2024, it is expected to create 30%. This upper-lining trend is one that businesses should pay more attention to if they hope to remain competitive and successful, especially when it comes to investing in renewable energy-based supply chains. Now more than ever, it’s vital that countries put renewable energy and other low-carbon technologies at the fore to build back better after COVID-19, creating new jobs and rebooting their economies. The fossil fuel industry is among the hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis, with leading oil, gas and petrochemical companies losing an average of 45% of their total market value. Since the start of the year, we have seen the sharpest drop in oil demand in a quarter of a century. Green energy stocks were also less volatile across the board than traditional fossil fuels, with such portfolios holding up well during the turmoil caused by the pandemic, while oil and gas collapsed.
The global movement of divestment from fossil fuels is gathering pace in Europe, with significant support from high-profile individuals, governments and businesses. It creates a positive environment for sustainable investment to thrive. Investing in renewable energy infrastructure has clear benefits: it can generate attractive returns for investors, whilst having a positive effect in the ongoing battle against the climate crisis. We want to see both sustainable energy production and secure energy supply at the heart of our communities, the energy sector and Government policy. Much more needs to be done by the international community, especially to drive investment in lower-income economies, where the private sector has been reluctant to venture.
Renewables are the force to a climate-safe world. Far from having to select between mitigating the foreseen climate crisis and economic upscale, it is visible than ever that a scope lives to ramp up investment in low-carbon technologies and shift the global development paradigm from one of scarcity, inequality and competition to one of shared prosperity – in our lifetimes. If we take clearer decisions now, a sustainable energy future is within our foremost reach.