The Frankfurt School UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate and Sustainable Energy Finance reports that $211 billion was invested in renewable energy in 2010, about one third more than the $160 billion in 2009.  The report, Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011, was prepared for UNEP by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.  The leading regions for financial new investment in renewables are

• China: up 28% to $48.9 billion
• South and Central America: up 39% to $13.1 billion;
• Middle East and Africa: up 104% to $5 billion;
• India: up 25% to $3.8 billion
• Asian developing countries (excluding China and India): up 31% to $4 billion.

Wind still leads in total investement, but solar has increased dramatically.

• wind (large scale) up 30% to $94.7 billion
• solar (large and small-scale) up 52% to $86 billion
• biomass and waste-to-energy $11 billion
• biofuels $5.5 billion.

Surge in small-scale renewable power projects

There was actually a decline of 22% to $35.2 billion in new financial investment in large-scale renewable energy in Europe in 2010,  but this was more than made up for by an increase in small-scale renewable projects, predominantly rooftop solar.  Overall investment in small-scale projects was up 91% year-over-year to $60 billion.  It is reported that investments in small distributed capacity rose dramatically in several countries

• Germany up 132% to $34 billion
• Italy up 59% to $5.5 billion,
• France up 150% to $2.7 billion
• Czech Republic up 163% to $2.3 billion.

Two reasons were identified for the dramatic increase in small-scale power projects: feed-in tariffs and a 60% drop in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) cells.  I blogged earlier about how the feed-in tariff program had been so successful in the Czech Republic that the Czech legislature had passed bills to limit the financial attractiveness of the program.