Clean Investment Monitor: Q4 2023 Update

Clean energy and transportation investment in the US set another record in Q4 of 2023, reaching $67 billion—a 40% increase from the same period in 2022. Clean investment now accounts for 5% of all private investment in structures, equipment, and durable consumer goods in the United States, up from 3.7% at the end of 2022. Looking at the full year of 2023, clean investment came in at $239 billion, up 38% from 2022. Retail investment accounted for nearly half of this total, driven by robust growth in electric vehicle sales (a 52% increase year-on-year). Investment in the deployment of utility-scale solar and storage systems also grew robustly over 2023, up more than 50% year-on-year to $53 billion. But the fastest investment growth last year occurred in the deployment of emerging climate technologies—up ten-fold from $0.9 billion in 2022 to $9.1 billion in 2023—and in the manufacturing of clean technology, up 153% from $19 billion in 2022 to $49 billion in 2023.

In contrast, despite a small bump in Q4 2023, wind investment declined to $9 billion in 2023, a 37% decrease from 2022. Meanwhile, investment in emerging climate technologies (clean hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels, and carbon capture) surpassed investment in wind for the first time in 2023, both across the year and in Q4. Retail investment in heat pumps is also lagging—down 16% year-on-year, though heat pumps have gained market share in a declining residential construction market.

This report summarizes key trends from our Q4 2023 update to the Clean Investment Monitor database, tracking public and private investment in clean technologies in the US. In this report, we also release the first results of our detailed bottom-up model of actual federal government investment in clean energy and transportation. We estimate a total of $34 billion in federal investment—including tax credits, grants, and the fiscal cost of government loans—went to clean energy and transportation projects nationwide in fiscal year 2023 (October 1, 2022 through September 30, 2023). There was $220 billion in total investment in clean energy and transportation projects during the same period. We share a breakdown of that investment by category and state.