There appears to be widespread agreement that the US is not spending enough money to develop a world-leading alternative energy market. When President Obama introduced his plans for clean energy development as part of his 2011 budget, he noted that the US could fall behind the rest of world in producing the clean energy “jobs of the future” unless the country invested more in alternative energy.

To that end, he
proposed spending $28.4 billion on energy programs, the most ever. That is still a fair bit behind China’s $34.6 billion investment in renewable energy in 2009. But government investment is not the whole story.

The United Nations Energy Programme estimates that about $155 billion from all sources was invested globally in renewable energy programs in 2008, the last year for which data is available. UNEP also estimates that investment needs to reach $500 billion by 2020 if the human population hopes to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions by then.

In 2008, UNEP reported $30.1 billion in total investments in North America. China’s investment totaled $15.6 billion. Most of the investment went into wind ($51.8 billion), solar ($33.5 billion), and biofuels ($16.9 billion).

Venture capital invested $19.3 billion in renewables in 2008, while equity investments totaled $11.4 billion, down more than half from 2007. The global economic free fall in the second half of 2008 effectively killed public financing for renewable energy companies.

But as the economy fights its way back to positive territory, private investment in renewable projects is expected to turn up again.