There was $265 billion in new investment in the manufacture and deployment of clean energy, clean vehicles, building electrification and carbon management technology in the U.S. in the past year, up 39% from the previous year. A record $71 billion of this investment occurred in the first quarter of 2024, a 40% increase relative to the same period in 2023.
Rhodium Group and MIT CEEPR’s Clean Investment Monitor is a comprehensive database, updated each quarter, of investment across the United States in:
Manufacturing: The construction or expansion of factories that manufacture clean energy, clean vehicle, building electrification, or carbon management technology.
Energy and Industry: New or expanded facilities to produce clean energy, capture carbon dioxide emissions, or decarbonize industrial activity.
Retail: The purchase and/or installation of clean electricity generation and storage, clean vehicles or building electrification technology by individual households and businesses.
To create a historical baseline against which to assess recent clean investment developments in the U.S., the CIM includes all investments in our covered technologies since 2018. This results in a database with roughly 20,000 individual facilities, 4 million zero emission vehicle registrations, 22 million heat pump sales, and 4.5 million distributed electricity generation or storage installations as of Q1 2024.
In the past two years, companies announced $152 billion in new investments in clean energy and vehicle technology manufacturing, a 110% increase over the previous two years. Most of the announcements by investment value are in the electric vehicle supply chain, from critical mineral production to battery and charger manufacturing to final vehicle assembly.
When it comes to actual clean manufacturing investments, total annual investment in the past two years was up 204% compared to the previous two years. We estimate that the electric vehicle supply chain accounted for $14 billion of the nearly $17 billion invested in the first quarter of 2024. The first quarter of 2024 also saw significant growth in solar manufacturing investment, up 248% compared to the first quarter of 2023.
In the past two years, companies have announced a total of nearly $260 billion in new investments in clean energy production, carbon dioxide capture or removal, and other forms of industrial decarbonization, a 34% increase over the previous two-year period. The complementary technologies of solar PV and grid-connected storage continue to dominate this segment, and there has also been significant growth in announced investments in emerging climate technologies like clean hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels, and carbon dioxide capture or removal. In the fourth quarter of 2024, companies announced $7.6 billion in deploying these technologies, more than double the investment announced in the previous quarter, though still 61% less than Q1 2023.
Of the total $24 billion in new actual investment in clean energy production and industrial decarbonization in Q1 2024, utility-scale solar and storage investment accounted for the majority at $15 billion. The most rapid growth in investment occurred in emerging climate technologies—clean hydrogen, carbon management, and sustainable aviation fuels. In the first quarter of 2024, there was $6.3 billion in investment in deploying these technologies, a 37% increase relative to Q4 2023 and a five-fold increase relative to Q1 2023.
In the past year, American businesses and households invested $126 billion in the purchase and installation of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs), heat pumps and distributed renewable energy generation, fuel cells and energy storage systems. That’s a 16% increase from the previous year and a 165% increase from 2018.
Within Retail, the vast majority of investment has been in the purchase of ZEVs. American businesses and households invested $84 billion in ZEVs in the past year, up from $66 billion in the previous year. Purchase and installations of residential and commercial rooftop solar systems, other distributed renewables, fuel cells and battery storage increased in the past year as well, a 16% increase from the previous year. Heat pump installations grew in the first quarter of 2024, reversing several quarters of decline, but was still down relative to the previous year, driven by continued weakness in residential construction activity.
.png)