Introduction to Renewable Energy Finance

Following a steep fall in the oil price in the early 1980s, the renewable energy industry was nearly decimated. Significant investments by large oil companies such as Exxon in solar photovoltaics (PVs) were sold off or abandoned and interest in the sector stagnated for nearly two decades. At the end of the last century, only two countries, Japan and the US, were producers of solar PV panels and total investment in the renewable energy sector as a whole bordered on trivial…