Efficiency of Clean Energy Investments by Country

Today, improving energy sustainability and investment in renewable energies are the primary methods of combating anthropogenic climate change. However, it is often unclear where the best places to invest in clean energy are. Usually, it requires months of intensive research into the political and economic situations of countries to determine the effect of energy-sector investment in generating electricity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, through an analysis of climate and economic data from the World Bank and Enerdata, which included variables such as greenhouse gas emissions by country and per capita energy production, a general guide to future investment can be developed.

Principal component analysis was applied to explore high-dimensional economic and climate-related data in R, and linear regressions were applied to factors that were found to be related to investment efficiency. It was found that already-sustainable countries benefited less per dollar per capita invested in them p=2.11e-7, and that a larger investment per capita reduced the effectiveness of each dollar per capita spent p=0.0418. A proposed optimal per-capita investment by country was determined by a mathematically derived equation.

This analysis suggests that to generate more electricity while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, investing in currently carbon-inefficient countries is preferable over developed countries. However, real-world considerations such as corruption and instability were not included within this quantitative analysis. This means that the analysis does not provide a definitive guide to international energy investment, but instead a general guideline to focus researchers' attentions. These results lay a framework for in-depth analysis on methods to combat the greatest current existential threat to humanity.