Credit crisis hurting clean energy sector: bankers

[phantom power]

LONDON (Reuters) - The renewable energy sector will see a 21 billion euro ($29.43 billion) shortfall in debt finance by 2020, following the credit crisis and a brake on lending, a senior banker said on Monday.

Investors at a renewable energy finance conference in London tried to digest the implications of a banking hiatus following Lehman Brothers' filing for bankruptcy and Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSLF19088420080915

[kristopher]

1. That is a good reason to abandon the free market approach

And proceed to direct federal investment in renewable infrastructure.

[GliderGuider]

2. Some of us have seen this coming for a while.

I warned about this in June: Central bank body warns of Great Depression

To link it back to the subject of the board, reports like this give me the heebie-jeebies because in the absence of sufficient capital any hopes of stopping, mitigating or adapting to energy depletion and climate change essentially go out the window. These are enormous projects that will be hard enough to pursue even if the economy is healthy. If the capital pool drains out as we are facing escalating energy costs, our prospects could dim considerably.

[Kolesar]

3. If we cut the US "Defense" and spy-satellites budget by $200 Billion/year could we do it?

I see a lot of wasted resources in those budgets.

Ohio's multi-billion dollar prison budget is my other peeve.

[GliderGuider]

4. The capital cost of commercial scale power is a couple of dollars a watt

So $200 billion would buy around 100 GW nameplate per year. If you put it all into windmills that could generate about 5% of US electrical consumption. So adding 5% per year would make a nice dent in the problem. Think you can convince the spyboyz to give up their toys?