A Hydro Quebec employee walks past monofacial solar panels at a solar plant in Varennes, Que. In the first half of 2025, global renewables investment rose 10 per cent from the year before, to a record US$386-billion, according to Zero Carbon Analytics.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Investors have committed US$20-billion to the second iteration of Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.’s BAM-T Global Transition Fund, making it the world’s largest private fund dedicated to the transition to clean energy, the company said Tuesday.
The windfall exceeded Brookfield’s own target, and underscores just how much money is being spent around the world to accelerate the shift to a net-zero carbon economy.
Roughly US$2.2-trillion globally is earmarked for spending on renewables, nuclear, power grids, low-emission fuels and electrification this year, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s twice as much as the capital being invested in oil, gas and coal.
According to the research group Zero Carbon Analytics, in the first half of 2025, global renewables investment alone rose 10 per cent from the year before, to a record US$386-billion.
Brookfield’s previous transition fund – which was co-managed by Mark Carney before he entered politics – raised US$15-billion and invested in various energy technologies including renewables, carbon capture, sustainable aviation fuel, battery storage and nuclear.
This fund, the Brookfield Global Transition Fund II, has raised capital totalling roughly US$23.5-billion. In addition to the contributions from institutional investors around the world, this also includes co-investments of about US$3.5-billion, Brookfield said. It has already invested more than US$5-billion across various transition projects, including in the renewable power and battery storage sectors. The company also recently struck energy supply deals with Microsoft and Google in wind, solar and hydroelectricity.
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Michel Letellier is the chief executive officer of Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., a global renewables company privatized this summer by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
Mr. Letellier said there remains brisk interest in clean-energy investment, though much of it is coming from major institutions such as pension funds and transition funds such as Brookfield’s, rather than public markets.
“There is a lot of long-term money, infrastructure funds, that are still super interested in deploying capital in our sector,” he said in an interview at the Canadian Renewable Energy Association’s Electricity Transformation Canada conference in Toronto. “The public market is a bit of a different story.”
Roughly 2,600 people are attending the conference, along with 180 exhibitors, underscoring the interest in renewables in Canada alone.
The time it takes to design, permit and develop large projects – typically five to eight years – often falls beyond the desired payout timing for public investors, Mr. Letellier said. Following the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, projects took longer and costs rose because of the disruptions to supply chains and surge in inflationary pressure, making development even more difficult. Now, the threat of tariffs is adding uncertainty to the market.
“Pension funds can use a discounted methodology to say, ‘Okay, you’ve just won a project. It’s going to take four or five years, but you’re going to have a stream of cash flow for the next 30 to 40 years.’” Private investors can accept the different risk profile and are willing to put up the capital, he said.
“That’s the big disconnect these days.”
The Caisse, for instance, is willing to accept a longer time horizon, which is what the industry needs. “We have to provide a return, but they are not reacting to one piece of bad news or good news,” Mr. Letellier said.
Innergex is partnered with First Nations on three wind projects out of nine that the B.C. government procured in 2024. It is bidding on more in the province’s next procurement.
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Global renewable power capacity is expected to double between now and 2030, increasing by 4,600 gigawatts, according to the International Energy Agency’s Renewables 2025 report, released Tuesday. That’s roughly the equivalent of adding China, the European Union and Japan’s power generation capacity combined to the global energy mix.
Solar power will account for almost 80 per cent of the global increase, followed by wind, hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal.
But the renewable energy growth forecast for the 2025-2030 period is 5-per-cent lower compared with last year’s report, largely reflecting policy, regulatory and market changes since October, 2024.
In the case of the United States, the forecast was cut almost in half owing to the country’s phase out of federal tax credits, imposition of new import restrictions, suspension of new offshore wind leases, and restrictions on permits for on-shore wind and solar projects on federal land.