Clean Energy Investment is Doubling Fossil? Depends On What You Count

Global reports show clean energy investments reaching double that of fossil fuels, but at least one climate finance commentator says the figures need a second look.

In a LinkedIn post, Jesse Griffiths, CEO of Finance Innovation Lab, says the number includes some investments that fall outside the scope of “clean energy” as most people would understand it, and that some are arguably not clean energy at all.

“Why does this worry me?” Griffiths asks. “Because it allows a too hopeful narrative to emerge that the market is fixing the problem, green investment is smashing fossil fuels, and we are making excellent progress. When in fact fossil fuel investment is still way, way too high, and renewables investment way, way too low.”

Griffiths’ criticism centres on the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual investment outlook. Its 2025 World Energy Investment report projected global energy investment would reach US$3.3 trillion by the end of the year. Of that, investment in renewable energy was set to reach $2.2 trillion, double what would be directed to fossil fuels, while fossil fuel investment would fall for the first time since 2020.

That calculation implies a promising picture for clean energy development, but Griffiths is not the first to raise concerns about the depiction. In a 2024 report, McKinsey & Company noted a “reality gap” between the perceived uptake of new technology and actual capital invested, writing that its findings should prompt “stakeholders across the energy value chain to revisit decarbonization plans and assess if these plans are still sufficient to achieve their climate goals.”

The growth in financing for renewables—under which the IEA includes nuclear, grids, energy storage, low-emissions fuels, energy efficiency, and electrification—reflects “not only efforts to reduce emissions but also the growing influence of industrial policy, energy security concerns, and the cost competitiveness of electricity-based solutions,” the organization said.

But Griffiths argues the IEA’s number is problematic for including investments in nuclear power and low-emission fuels. The IEA includes modern bioenergy, low-emissions hydrogen, hydrogen-based fuels, and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), which have shortcomings that arguably undermine their climate benefits. McKinsey identified CCUS as the technology with the largest gap between the number of planned projects and those really taking shape, while reporting that only 11% and 15% of planned hydrogen projects in Europe and the U.S., respectively, had reached final investment decisions.

Even including nuclear power and low-emission fuels as sources of clean energy generation, Griffiths says clean energy investment still only rises to a total of around $0.894 trillion, an amount that is “considerably less than fossil fuels.” To get to the IEA’s $2.2 trillion figure, the IEA added $773 billion energy efficiency and end use investments and another $479 billion in grids and storage.

“I’m not saying these are bad things, but these are about improvements to the overall system, not ‘clean energy’ as most people would understand it,” Griffiths writes. Most net-zero scenarios do include drastic energy efficiency gains and clean grid expansions as preconditions to get emissions under control.

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