Clean energy financing and why developing markets should increase their investment amidst Covid-19.

With the Paris Agreement states bound themselves to invest in renewable energy research and development as a way of reducing the amount of greenhouse gasses (GHG's) that were being emitted into the atmosphere. 

They therefore had to come up with financial policies and packages guided  towards the use and utilization of clean energy rather than fossil fuels in their societies. However even with this, clean energy financing in many countries is still not being prioritized. A case in point is Russia, one of Europe's largest energy producers. It laid down a rather extensive clean energy finance and investment plan but to a larger extent the goals that the plan aimed to accomplish have not yet been met. When you compare this to it's accomplishments in the fossil fuel sector, a very distinct contrast can be drawn.

With the rise of Covid-19, governments have not only had to inject huge amounts of money into their economies to offset the impacts of the pandemic in their communities but they have also received hefty financial packages from organizations and other financial institutions to aid them in this endeavor.

It should also be noted that with this pandemic, the price of fossil fuels has dropped as well as the price of renewables. This is why in the current UN report; Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2020, it has been stated that  "putting these dollars into renewables will buy more generational capacity than ever before" in a bid to curb climate change.

"putting these dollars into renewables will buy more generational capacity than ever before"

The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) Chief also asserts in this brief that, "If governments take advantage of the ever falling price tag of renewables to put clean energy at the heart of Covid-19 economic recovery, instead of subsidizing the recovery of fossil fuel industries, they can take a big step towards clean energy and a healthy natural world – which ultimately is the best insurance policy against global pandemics."

This therefore means that if governments used part of their economic packages to invest in clean energy, it would not only be a smart investment as the price of renewables is quite low at the moment but it would also be a much needed move towards achieving more sustainable economies which is something that the developing world has already been aspiring to achieve.