Source: Xinhua    Published: 2016-1-16

A two-day International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) summit started Saturday under the theme "Mobilizing investment to accelerate energy agreement post the United Nations (UN) Climate Conference (COP21)" Paris agreement.

The aim of IRENA is to activate the COP21 Paris agreement held in December 2014, where over 190 countries conceded to limit global temperature increase to below two degrees Celsius.

Ministers, bankers and green energy experts said at the sixth annual IRENA assembly Sunday that investment in green energy can only be increased through developing sector research, closing current gaps between funding and green energy companies and the transformation of policy into action.

Rachel Kyte, CEO of the UN`s initiative of Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, said at the ministerial roundtable that future investment into wind, solar or bio-energy must be based on specialized research in order to identify why funding for renewable energy supply and demand is still lacking."

According to Adnan Z. Amin, IRENA Director-General, investment into renewable energy reached approximately 329 U.S. billion dollars in 2015. The Paris COP21 clarified that investment must progress throughout all industries and regions, he said.

"However, increased standardization of green energy and extra public-private partnerships are needed in order to augment growth, hence enabling the attainment of the 500 billion dollars investment goal into green energy by 2020," added Amin.

While renewable energy currently accounts for over 22 percent of total global capacity in the global power sector since 2011, the industry is still growing, said Kyung-Ah Park, Managing Director and Head of Environment Markets Group at the United States investment bank Goldman Sachs.

"Stock-listed green energy firms worldwide have a combined market capital of 300 billion dollars, equal to the U.S. oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil`s market value," Ms. Park added.

Ms. Park also said that while COP21`s objective of limiting global temperature increase to below two degrees Celsius is an important symbolic step, "markets focus on action and on matching supply with demand rather than on semantics and policies."

She also pressed for increased transparency regarding credit histories of green energy producing firms.

In response, SE4All`s Kyte stated that further research is needed to discover the reasons why clean energy succeeded with some projects whereas in other cases funding failed to jumpstart further projects.

"We also need additional data on risk appetite among potential investors" she added.

Maximus Johnity Ongkili, Malaysia`s Minister of Energy, Green Technology and Water, said Malaysia already reached a 33 percent green energy per capita share, "surpassing the 27th ASEAN summit agreement held in Kuala Lumpur in November. However if hydro energy is reduced in Malaysia, shares will drop to below 20 percent, and we won`t risk developing solar and wind energy."

Malaysia is prepared to cooperate with IRENA to mitigate funding of sustainable energy projects.