With their USD 71 trillion in assets, institutional investors - including pension funds and insurance companies - potentially have an important role to play in financing clean energy programmes. Given the current low interest rate environment and weak economic growth prospects in many OECD countries, institutional investors are increasingly looking for ‘real’ asset classes which can deliver steady, preferably inflation adjusted, income streams with low correlations to the returns of other investments. Clean energy projects can provide institutional investors with investments which potentially combine these sought-after characteristics.