Clean energy investments rise in 2025 to nearly USD 2.2 trillion
30 DEC, 2025
By Christian Rom
By Christian Rom, Portfolio Manager of the DNB Fund Renewable Energy at DNB Asset Management
Despite political uncertainties following the U.S. elections, 2025 marked a turning point for the cleantech sector. More favorable regulatory frameworks and rapidly growing electricity demand—driven by electrification, reshoring, and artificial intelligence—have accelerated the recovery. The decline in long-term interest rates also improves planning certainty for new projects.
Looking ahead, we continue to view our three key themes—energy, electrification, and resource efficiency—as central and highly relevant to the evolving global economy.
An increasingly polarized world is reinforcing trends toward deglobalization. This entails an enormous need for infrastructure investment in the Western world to enable the reshoring of manufacturing and resource processing after decades of dependence on China. In this context, AI could act as a catalyst.
Sum of hyperscalers’ capital expenditures compared with data center electricity demand as a share of total electricity consumption in the U.S. and globally, from 2019 to the 2030 forecast
AI needs more than computing power
However, scaling AI requires massive infrastructure investment. One of the most significant constraints for data centers appears to be the time required to secure electricity supply. Mobile, off-grid gas engines with storage capacity are currently among the preferred solutions, as existing nuclear power plants have already been committed through new contracts and modernized, and gas turbine order books are full through the end of the decade.
It is also clear that aging grid infrastructure can hardly cope with the surge in connection requests, changing load profiles, the growing share of intermittent renewable energy, and rebounding demand. Investments in power grids will need to increase significantly over the next ten years, although this will not happen without debates over affordability.
Higher investments by U.S. utilities due to rising electricity demand, from 2014 to 2029
Global energy investments by the IEA in clean energy and fossil fuels, 2015–2025
Energy policy in transition
Over the past year, it has become increasingly clear that future energy policy requires an “all-of-the-above” strategy, including renewable energy.
Learning curves in solar, wind, and storage technologies will lead to further cost reductions as these technologies continue to scale. While the transition may have slowed due to higher capital costs and weaker political support (at least in the U.S.), this is likely to result in greater economic productivity losses from climate change, whose effects will intensify and ultimately reaccelerate growth.
Today, clean technology markets are larger and more diverse, technologies are more mature and cost-competitive, and legislative support remains solid (at least outside the U.S.). We remain confident that the energy transition has not gone off track and that conditions remain in place for clean technologies to continue gaining market share.
