Global spend on renewables up by 40% on year

Deal activity in the renewables industry hit a record high last year, figures today reveal, leading to a smaller number of big global players.

PwC’s annual analysis of merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions in the sector shows that deal values worldwide totalled $53.5 billion (£34bn) in 2011, up 40 per cent on a year earlier. In the UK, deal values more than doubled to $3.2bn (£2bn).

One in every three transactions last year involved solar and the overall value for that sector rose 56 per cent to $15.8bn.

The study said a “reappraisal” of the role of nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan had provided an “extra impulse for renewable generation in certain markets”.

Billion-dollar-plus transactions dominated, as solar, wind and energy-efficiency agreements overtook hydropower as the driver for big-deal values for the first time, PwC added.

However, the firm warned that continued uncertainty in the eurozone could make the deal environment “much more difficult for 2012”.

The report comes as Scots law firm McGrigors notes that investment in UK onshore wind power is “soaring to new heights” following its work on a string of renewables deals in recent weeks.

Energy experts at the practice, which has advised on several major fundings, believe that a surge in activity is evidence of “increasing confidence among the banking community towards green power”.

SCOTT REID