Brazil topped an index of best clean energy opportunities among 26 Latin American and Caribbean countries, the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter- American Development Bank and Bloomberg New Energy Finance said.

They used 30 indicators to measure the ability of each country to attract capital to expand economies based on renewable types of energy, aggregated into scores from 0 to 5, with 5 representing the best investing environment, the fund and BNEF said in a statement today.

Brazil ranked the highest with its score of 2.6 indicating “ample opportunity for improving conditions to attract more capital for low-carbon and renewable energy capacity,” according to the statement. The country was followed in the rankings by Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Chile in that order.

Despite the region’s “extraordinary” renewable energy resources and strong economic growth in recent years, the local clean energy sector attracted less than 5 percent of an estimated $280 billion invested worldwide last year, they said.

The fund and BNEF are launching “Climatescope,” the first annual report, index and interactive web tool on the clean energy market in the region, to be released June 19 during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Copyright 2012 Bloomberg

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