last updated 10th November 05
By 4ecotips

New technologies meeting 4% of energy capacity

Global investment in renewable energy set a new record of $30bn in 2004, according to a report released today by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). Technologies such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and small hydro now provide 160 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity, about 4%of the
world total, the report finds.

"Renewable energy has become big business," said Eric Martinot, lead author of Renewables 2005: Global Status Report. Martinot, who is a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute and a lecturer at Tsinghu University in Beijing, notes that renewable energy is attracting some of the world's largest companies, including General Electric, Siemens, Sharp, and Royal Dutch Shell.

The report estimates that nearly 40m households worldwide heat their water with solar collectors, most of them installed in the last five years. Altogether, renewable energy industries provide 1.7m jobs, most of them skilled and well-paying.

The Global Status Report was compiled by Martinot, working with more than 100 researchers and contributors from at least 20 countries. It provides an assessment of several renewables technologies - small hydro, modern biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuels - that are now competing with conventional fuels in four distinct markets: power generation, hot water and space heating, transportation fuels, and rural (off-grid) energy supplies.

The report finds that government support for renewable energy is growing rapidly. At least 48 countries now have some type of renewable energy promotion policy, including 14 developing countries. Most targets are for shares of electricity production, typically 5-30%, by the 2010-2012 timeframe. Mandates for blending biofuels into vehicle fuels have been enacted in at least 20 states and provinces worldwide as well as in three key countries - Brazil, China and India.

Government leadership provides the key to market success, according to the report. The market leaders in renewable energy in 2004 were Brazil in biofuels, China in solar hot water, Germany in solar electricity, and Spain in wind power.

The fastest growing energy technology in the world is grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV), which grew in existing capacity by 60% per year from 2000-2004, to cover more than 400,000 rooftops in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Second is wind power capacity, which grew by 28% last year, led by Germany, with almost 17 gigawatts installed as of 2004.

Production of biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) exceeded 33bn litres in 2004, when ethanol displaced about 3% of the 1,200 billion litres of gasoline globally.