6. Clean Energy Technology: Investment and Investment Financing in Renewable Energy, Batteries, Energy Supply and Storage

Viable financial markets underpin all competitive markets. Indeed, their development, depth, liquidity, and viability sustain market competition. The role of financial markets in clean energy technology (CET) market funding—investment and investment financing—is small and therefore a primary reason for its slow development. The primary focus of the investment community has been on large, utility grid-scale renewable energy (RE) financing and not on early and middle stage R&D and manufacturing scale-up financing. Financial market financing of RE supply and storage technology, in particular to fund the wide array of stationary, mobile, portable battery and energy supply and storage (B|ESST), therefore is segmented, not to mention insufficient in scale to meet the capital infrastructure needs of environmental risk mitigation. This chapter describes current financial market conditions, CET funding, and the future prospects for CET financial markets.