Top 5 countries to invest in renewable energy

According to the Ernst & Young 'Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index', the five most attractive countries for investment are Spain, USA, Germany, UK and India, in that order. The index provides an overall score for renewable technologies that are currently entering the market on a large scale, i.e. wind, solar and biomass. Wind as the most important renewable from a business perspective today, is weighted 85%, solar and biomass respectively 5% and 10%. 

For each technology, an index is constructed based on a mixture of infrastructure and technology factors:

• Infrastructure (35%): Market risk, Planning & grid connection issues, Access to finance
• Technology (65%): Power offtake attractiveness, Tax climate, Grant/soft loan availability, Market growth potential, Current installed base, Resource quality, Project size

Financial aspects, i.e. access to finance, power offtake attractiveness, tax climate and grants/soft loans, often regarded as the critical factor of success for renewable energy sources, are weighted together 35.5%. They're a very necessary, but far from sufficient condition for development.

Addendum, May 3rd  E&Y has updated the index with a Spring 2006 edition - the top five remains the same, but India took the fourth position from UK. Also Portugal, China and Ireland are becoming (slightly) more attractive, according to the index.