John Kuhns, CEO of China Hydroelectric Corp., is one of the few successful foreign investors in the Chinese green energy market. Kuhns started buying hydroelectric power-generating equipment in China in 1986 and went on to develop several projects there in the mid-1990s. Today, with 29 stations, China Hydroelectric is the largest of the nation’s power companies using environmentally friendly sub-50-megawatt generators. "Hydropower is the cheapest way to make juice in China, and it is also clean, so its future is very bright," says Kuhns, who also founded the first wind power company to go public in the U.S.
With regulatory risks in Europe and the lack of a renewable energy policy in the U.S., investors may want to follow in Kuhns’s footsteps. Asia and Oceania have seen the biggest worldwide increase in investments in renewable energy projects since 2008, largely as a result of activity in China, the World Economic Forum says in its latest report on green investing. China has the world’s biggest clean energy asset financing market, with investments worth $29.8 billion, or 86 percent of the country’s total clean energy financing. The U.S. is a distant second with $11.2 billion, according to a recent report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based think tank.....