Clean Energy Investing: Global Comparison of Investment Returns

To shed light on the long-term prospects for clean energy, we investigate the historical financial performance of energy companies around the world in search of broad structural trends. This is the second in a series of joint reports by the International Energy Agency and Imperial College Business School examining the risk and return proposition in energy transitions.

In this paper, we extend our coverage of publicly-traded renewable power and fossil fuel companies to the following: 1) global markets, 2) advanced economies, 3) emerging market and developing economies, and 4) China. We calculate the total return and annualized volatility of these portfolios over 5 and 10-year periods.