Finance goes faster to renewables than the world, experts say

Finance and investors are moving much faster towards renewable energies than the world in general, as experts on Wednesday have said in the panel "Financing of renewables in Spain and beyond," held within the COP 25 Climate Summit.

BNP Paribas Asset Management Global Sustainability Research Chief Mark Lewis, who has intervened in the panel, moderated by the acting Secretary of State for Energy, José Domínguez Abascal, has indicated that "when the perception of the world changes, the money moves quickly. "

Lewis, who has explained that as an energy analyst he has followed the sector for twenty-five years in Europe, he has indicated that the reduction in renewable costs has been spectacular and nobody could have imagined it in 2005.

He has acknowledged that renewables do not give returns to investors who provide oil and gas, but investing this forces them to take greater risks, such as the volatility of raw material prices.

In addition, the oil sector has had to go further and further because the one that was closest ran out and "we ran out of it", while renewables do not need to look for energy, but to build the infrastructure to capture it, to which unites that the more infrastructure is built the more the price is cheaper.

Lewis said that the oil and gas sector is having a hard time because they now have competitors to supply energy and will not be able to achieve returns of around 15-20%.

Mark Lewis has said that "renewable energy is going to conquer the world" and has added financial markets move when they have incentives, such as changing the demand that goes towards renewables in the future, something the oil industry is not understanding .

"Fossil fuels will not work and markets are looking at that," said Lewis, who said that "it is a risk to continue investing in oil and gas."

Meanwhile, Nancy Saich, Head of Climate Change and Senior Climate and Environment Advisor of the European Investment Bank (EIB), said that the European public bank introduced much stricter emission standards to finance projects, which will make In the near future, all fossil fuels will be excluded.

He has also pointed out that, in addition to investing in electrification, it is necessary to invest in energy efficiency and has indicated that in Europe the little renovation of buildings is "catastrophic".

For his part, Lene Westgaard-Hall, a member of the Parliament of Norway, who decided that the sovereign fund of Norway (the largest in the world) to stop investing in oil companies, has indicated that this country, in which oil is produced, has invested a lot of money in this hydrocarbon, but there they begin to worry that in the future they will run out of assets.

Westgaard-Hall has said that, therefore, "renewables will be a greater part of our financial future than they have been in the history of Norway", which has predicted that "renewables will reach the entire fund" .

He has indicated that, however, Norway must guarantee the profitability of its sovereign wealth fund to its citizens, which has to have the same benefits with renewables as with oil, although it does not believe that its country will stop extracting, except in some areas for environmental reasons, because "we don't want to lose money in the short term."