Uptake of clean energy in the post-Copenhagen world will be driven by national and sub-national policies and the private investment community rather than federal or international policy frameworks, according to Datamonitor.

A new report from the firm predicts that investment in the cleantech sector in 2010 will exceed that in 2009 by a margin of as much as 35 per cent, despite significant current uncertainty in US and EU carbon markets.

Alternatives to emissions cap-and-trade frameworks have emerged in the form of sub-national mandates and incentives for clean energy. Datamonitor expects progress on new global and US climate regimes will be slow and unconvincing this year, but that the race to dominate the emerging clean economy will accelerate regardless, fuelled by unprecedented quantities of green and clean stimulus funding.

Alex Desbarres, senior renewables analyst at Datamonitor, said: “Copenhagen did not deliver the low-carbon vision, clear policy landscape and regulatory frameworks that the energy cleantech investment community had hoped for.

“For all its flaws, however, the Copenhagen accord gave the cleantech community the sense that private investors will drive the transition to a low-carbon economy.”