59-05-032 Proceeding

36 Proceedings of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Congress to prioritize incentive measures (Figure 5). Note that the LCOE of renewables vary from country to country. And some renewables including onshore wind, biomass, hydropower and geothermal will become increasingly competitive in the near future. The rising trend of renewables was reflectedmost significantly from increasing investments, with USD153 billion invested in renewable sources as compared to USD106 billion in fossil fuel on annual average from2000 to 2013 (“World Energy Investment”, 2014). AGuardian report also showed positively that funds without coal, oil and gas in the portfolio outperformed conventional funds by 1.2%on annual return in the past five years (Collinson, 2015).This development challenged thosewho oppose divestment from fossil fuel for profitability reasons. However, global investments in energy supply is still dominated by fossil fuels, as more than USD1 trillion out of USD1.6 trillion invested in 2013 is related to the extraction and transport of fossil fuels, oil refining and the construction of fossil fuel-fired power plants. The level of investment in renewables is dependent on perceived risk and return, or risk-adjusted returns (Westenhagen and Menichetti, 2013). This perception of risk and return may vary, in that within the developed countries with slowing economies, energy technologies and systems could garner high returns. In the developing world with the economies booming, there may be other investment areas which deliver higher, short- Figure 5 LCOE for renewables, 2012 and 2020 (Source: IRENA, 2013)