Renewable Energy Investment · Benefits and Barriers
A complete IELTS Academic Writing Task 2 question with a model answer of 345 words, plus a breakdown of the sentence structures, cohesive devices and vocabulary that answer uses. Write your own version first, then compare.
Written by Manish Sharma · CELTA and DELTA qualified · 8 years teaching IELTS
Score my answer to this questionThe question
You have 40 minutes. Write at least 250 words.
Many governments and companies are investing increasingly large sums in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. What are the main benefits of investing in renewable energy? What barriers slow down this investment in many countries? Write at least 250 words.
How to approach it
- 01Answer BOTH questions explicitly — give each its own clearly signposted body paragraph
- 02Devote roughly equal space to benefits and to barriers — do not let one dominate
- 03Within each paragraph, group related ideas (environmental + economic + strategic for benefits)
- 04Use concrete country examples (Denmark, Germany, Russia) and specific terms (intermittency, battery storage)
- 05Use precise discourse markers: 'Environmentally', 'Economically', 'Strategically', 'The most obvious is'
- 06End with a conclusion that addresses BOTH halves of the prompt and points to a solution
Model answer
345 words in 4 paragraphs. Read it after you have written your own, not before: the point of a model answer is to show you what you missed, and you cannot miss anything you have not attempted.
Wind turbines now line coastlines across northern Europe, and rooftop solar panels are spreading from California to rural India. Even so, the pace of renewable investment varies enormously between countries. This essay considers the central benefits of investing in clean energy and the barriers that continue to slow it down.
The benefits of renewable investment are economic, environmental, and strategic in roughly equal measure. Environmentally, replacing coal and gas plants with wind, solar, and hydro reduces the carbon emissions driving climate change and removes the air pollutants — nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, particulate matter — that cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year. Economically, the falling cost of solar panels and wind turbines means that new renewable capacity is now often cheaper to build than equivalent fossil-fuel capacity, and once installed, sunlight and wind cost nothing to extract. Renewable industries also create skilled jobs in manufacturing, installation, and grid management, and several countries — notably Denmark and Germany — have built profitable export industries from their early investments. Strategically, a country with abundant domestic renewables is far less exposed to oil and gas price shocks or to political pressure from energy-exporting states such as Russia.
However, several barriers continue to slow investment. The most obvious is the high upfront capital cost: a solar farm or offshore wind project may take a decade to pay back, and in countries with weak credit markets, financing such long projects is genuinely difficult. Existing fossil-fuel industries also resist change vigorously, lobbying governments to maintain subsidies and tax breaks that artificially lower the price of coal and gas. The intermittency of wind and solar requires expensive grid upgrades and battery storage, which governments are often slow to commission. Finally, planning permission for large wind farms or transmission lines is frequently delayed by local opposition and lengthy environmental reviews, even when the projects enjoy national support.
In conclusion, while renewable energy delivers clear environmental, economic, and strategic gains, investment is held back by capital costs, entrenched fossil-fuel interests, grid limitations, and planning bottlenecks — all of which governments must address to accelerate the transition.
What this answer actually does
Measured from the text above, and compared against the other 69 answers of the same type in this library. These are counts, not band scores: they describe what the writing does, which is the part you can copy.
54 more than the median answer for this task type
7 words at the shortest, 39 at the longest
1 more than the median answer for this task type
carry a subordinate or relative clause
Sentence rhythm
Sentences average 24.6 words and vary by 9.7 words either side of that, running from 7 words to 39. Variation is the point. Grammatical Range and Accuracy rewards a mix of simple and complex sentences, and an answer where every sentence is the same length reads as flat no matter how correct it is. 6 of the 14 sentences here carry a subordinate or relative clause.
The cohesive devices it uses
7 in total, spread across 4 different functions. Range matters more than count: an answer that opens every paragraph with a sequencer signals its structure but never signals a relationship between ideas, and Coherence and Cohesion is marked on both.
however, even so, while
such as
finally, once
in conclusion
Vocabulary and repetition
Ignoring grammar words, 77 per cent of the content words in this answer are distinct, and 62 per cent appear exactly once. Lexical Resource is where repetition costs the most marks, and the usual cause is not a small vocabulary but reaching for the same noun every time the topic is named.
The longest run of words copied straight from the question is 4 words. Examiners discount wording lifted from the question, so a short run here is the right outcome: the answer restates the topic in its own words rather than borrowing the question's.
What you are marked on
All four criteria carry equal weight, and your Writing band is their average rounded to the nearest half band.
Task Response
Fully answer both direct questions: the main benefits of renewable investment AND the barriers that slow it down, with adequate development.
Coherence & Cohesion
Use a clear four-paragraph structure that devotes a body paragraph to each question, with strong topic sentences and linking.
Lexical Resource
Use precise vocabulary for energy policy, economics, and environmental science.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
Use a range of complex structures including conditionals, concessive clauses, and passive forms for policy contexts.
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