Barclays bank has launched a new £100 million investment fund for UK farmers to invest in renewable energy, the bank announced this week. The launch of the fund follows a survey of UK farmers carried out by Barclays which found that over one-third are “expecting to invest in renewable energy, with the majority doing so within the next year.”

Some 80% of the farmers questioned said they think that renewable energy can provide significant cost savings, with 60% saying that renewable energy could generate additional income for their farm business, Barclays said. Meanwhile, Barclays itself predicts that the costs of wind power will fall by up to 50% in the next three to five years.

Blackstone, one of the world’s largest asset management and private equity firms, are investing in the Meerwind Offshore Wind farm in Germany. They’ve written a guest post for the EWEA blog on why they chose to do this….

By: Sean Klimczak, Managing Director in the Private Equity Group, Blackstone

Earlier this month, Blackstone, leading investment and advisory firm, announced the financial closing for “Meerwind,” the largest German offshore wind farm to complete its full financing process.

The Meerwind project was made possible by the German regulatory framework for offshore wind, which is one of the best designed and practical renewable programs in the world. Meerwind is the first project to close under the recently unveiled KfW-sponsored Offshore Wind Programme. This visionary program, developed by the German government, is designed to help replace the ~25,000 megawatts of power needed as a result of the recent announcement that Germany is retiring its entire fleet of nuclear power plants by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear tragedy in Japan.

Wind power and other renewables supplied an estimated 16% of global final energy consumption last year and delivered close to 20% of global electricity production, according to a comprehensive new report published Tuesday.

The REN21 Renewables 2011 Global Status Report  released in Paris also showed that the renewable energy sector continues to perform well despite continuing economic recession, incentive cuts, and low natural-gas prices.

More than 50 percent of 31,000 people surveyed worldwide say they would pay more for products made with clean energy. In addition, 90 percent want more renewable energy and 79 percent have a more positive perception of brands produced using wind energy.

The poll, conducted in May 2011 by TNS Gallup and commissioned by wind turbine manufacturer Vestas, points to the importance ordinary people place on finding solutions to climate change – a full “53 percent of Chinese consumers rank climate change as the world’s greatest single challenge”, according to the poll.

Wind power and other renewables can play a significant role in a new global “green economy” while also helping mitigate climate change between now and 2050, according to an exhaustive new report released on Monday.

Produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the 624-page report identified the energy industry as one of the key sectors that will underpin a green economy.

The report said investing 2% of global GDP into the key sectors “can kick-start a transition towards a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy” that replaces the “existing, resource-depleting, high carbon ‘brown’ economy” by mid-century.