Analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance data suggests a clean technology investment rally could be under way with a 10 per cent climb already this year.
BNEF has become the latest analyst firm to confirm an uptick in clean energy investment since the turn of the year, with new figures showing global investment rose year-on-year to US$47.7 billion.
The report said the increase in investment activity was driven by a 42 per cent jump in funding for small-scale solar projects to US$21.2bn, as the plummeting cost of solar PV systems continued to drive strong demand from businesses and households in key markets such as the United States.
The new data follows the publication of similar figures from Clean Energy Pipeline, which uses different criteria for classifying clean energy investment.
However, it similarly confirmed an encouraging 14 per cent year-on-year increase in first quarter investment to US$61bn.
BNEF said total first quarter investment was down on the US$58.1bn recorded in the last quarter of 2013, as a result of developers rushing to meet subsidy deadlines and the impact of the winter weather on project activity in the northern hemisphere.
However, chairman of the advisory board for BNEF, Michael Liebreich, said the increase in investment on a year-on-year basis represented an “encouraging” development for the global clean energy industry.
“It is too early to say definitively that 2013 was the low point for clean energy investment worldwide and that 2014 will show a rebound, but the first-quarter numbers are encouraging,” he said in a statement.
“Two trends, in particular, are worth picking out, the increasing share of small-scale solar in overall investment, following a 50 per cent plus improvement in PV’s levelised cost of electricity per MW over the last four years; and the geographical expansion of investment to more and more emerging economies.
“In Q1, we saw two of the top four asset finance deals happening in Indonesia and Kenya.”
The US led the nascent recovery, with investment up 95 per cent year-on-year to US$7.9bn, while the Asia and Oceania region also saw investment climb 26 per cent to US$12.1bn.
The Middle East and Africa also saw investment climb 82 per cent to US$2.4bn and Brazilian investment soared 211 per cent to US$1.3bn.
There was a less encouraging performance from Europe and the Americas, excluding the US and Brazil, as investment fell 30 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively, to US$11.1bn and US$2.1bn.
Investment in utility-scale clean energy projects and venture capital investment also fell globally, but was more than offset by increased investment in smaller scale projects, improved public market investment, and a 57 per cent jump year-on-year in merger and acquisition activity to US$7.1bn.
There were also encouraging performances from listed clean tech companies, with BNEF reporting that the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, or NEX, which tracks around 100 clean energy stocks worldwide, rose 11 per cent in the first quarter and is now roughly double its low of July 2012.