Clean energy investment hit a new record last quarter, mostly driven by EVs

The expiry of electric vehicle tax credits didn’t just do wonders for the sales figures of automakers like Tesla; it also contributed to the best quarter of clean energy investment ever in Q3 this year, per a new report.

According to new data from the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project from MIT and the Rhodium Group, clean energy investment across the US reached a record-breaking $75 billion last quarter, up 8% from the same period last year, as efforts to curb our economy’s emissions continue.

The monitor endeavors to track the entire supply chain, from industrial clean energy projects and zero-emissions factories, to consumers buying electric cars and solar panels to charge them. While there has been a growing wave of new investment in solar and wind projects, as well as a burgeoning manufacturing footprint focused on making batteries, solar equipment, and other clean tech products, the reality is that much of the boom was fueled simply by people buying electric vehicles.

Indeed, retail made up the bulk of the spending tracked, with consumers alone investing $31.2 billion into zero-emission vehicles in the US in Q3, as people rushed to snap up EVs before Biden-era tax relief credits expired at the end of September. That means that zero-emission vehicles accounted for more than 40% of the record-breaking clean energy investment.

However promising the latest results, the third-quarter overall figure might be a record that’s unlikely to be broken any time soon, as Axios pointed out, given that other signals on how the clean energy industry is faring seem suggest things are going in the other direction.