The continuous energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is a complex and long-term paradigm shift.

Recently, the UN Environment’s Economy Division in cooperation with Frankfurt SchoolUNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance and produced in collaboration with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, produced a report outlining some of the economic trends in renewable energy. Link to PDF of the report.

They noted the positive and negative trends taking place in different sectors of energy production.

The report notes:

• One of the up-and-coming innovations in renewable power is the siting of two different technologies in the same location, to make use of shared land, grid connections and maintenance, and to reduce intermittency.

Combining different forms of renewable energy, and developing more efficient infrastructure will continue to be a trend moving forward in 2017.

“It’s a whole new world: even though investment is down, annual installations are still up; instead of having to subsidise renewables, now authorities may have to subsidise natural gas plants to help them provide grid reliability.” – Michael Liebreich, chairman of the Advisory Board at BNEF

Additionally, there was big news within investments and growth for renewable energy. The report showed that data indicates:

• Global new investment in renewables excluding large hydro fell by 23% to $241.6 billion, the lowest total since 2013, but there was record installation of renewable power capacity worldwide in 2016.

Bloomberg reviews the 2016 trends of renewable energy in the YouTube clip below.