More cleantech money than investment opportunities?

As earlier mentioned in this blog, investor's interest in cleantech is growing, and there is no sign that this trend is over anytime soon. At a global scale, investments grew with approximately 67% between 2005 and 2006. New Energy Finance estimates that this sector will keep growing by 17% until In total, US$17 Bn was invested in the cleantech sector in 2006. US$2Bn available was not used however. Apparently there is more money dedicated for cleantech investment than there are opportunities. Possibly, a greater amount of international integration of cleantech investments could be beneficial in this case, especially to capture and to market innovations in neighbour countries and from the emerging economies. In that way, a larger part of the resource could be used for what they are intended. In particular, this could be an opportunity in the Scandinavian region, where the cultural and geographic distances are small.
There are several challenges for this development. Trade tariffs is one of them. And regional and national protectionist subsidy schemes & public investment mechanisms may encourage a local rather than an international focus.

Trade tariffs against cleantech

The European Commission has extended the European import duties on efficient light bulbs. The tariffs are supposed to protect European light bulb producers from their Chinese counter parts. This is problematic from a cleantech trade point of view. It means higher prices for consumers and less incentives to improve domestic and commercial building energy efficiency in Europe. Further on, it is a hinder for the development of the environmental technology industries in emerging economies.

However, perhaps could European LED and OLED lighting producers benefit from this?