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A $40 Billion investment in Renewable Energy by Goldman Sachs

The investment firm Goldman Sachs has announced that it will invest 40 Billion USD in the renewable energy arena. The investment has a 10 year horizon and it is certainly not the first investment stream by the investment giant.

The announcement was made at the shareholders meeting in Jersey City, New Jersey. The head of clean technology and renewables of the firm has stated that they believe this is another emerging opportunity that they think will be quite large.

In the past years Goldman Sachs has invested a lot of money in this crucial and rapidly growing energy sector. It was revealed that by the end of 2011 Goldman Sachs has financed projects worth $24 billion and has investment another $4 billion in the capital of renewable energy companies.

The newly announced $40 billion investment plan will use own funds and client’s funds, so that the company will invest in the rapidly growing clean energy sector. Goldman Sachs will invest in the proven renewable green energy sectors of: wind, solar, biomass and geothermal and to specific related sectors of green transportation, LED manufacturing, PV cell manufacturing and energy storage. One can think of many reasons as to why Goldman Sachs has made this decision:  The main reasons can be:

  • Diversification of investment
  • The rapid expansion of renewable energy over the past 3-4 years
  • Goldman’s attempt to prove commitment to sustainability, after they have been accused of ‘’toxic and destructive’’ behaviour

We believe that the investment and fund managers at Goldman Sachs have seen a real opportunity in renewable green energy technologies and implementation projects and given the fact that these technologies have reached an acceptable level of maturity and adoption makes the investment in this direction a more attractive one. As a proof of this, one can read the Reuters announcement which states that Goldman Sachs has seen the renewable energy area as one of the biggest profit opportunities since the emerging markets era was announced in 2001. One of the driving factors that the company sees for the renewable green energy is that fact that industrial countries are committed in the reduction of emissions and one way to achieve this is the increased use of renewable energy.

Goldman Sachs is not the only firm which has announced heavy and targeted investment in the renewables and it coincides with the announcement by many nations, such as Ireland, of their 2020 renewable green energy strategy. It also comes two months after the announcement by Germany for a 200 Billion euro investment in renewables.