Renewable Energy Trends 2006

In 2000 the solar photovoltaic industry was a $2.5 billion business; wind power was $4 billion. In five years both have grown worldwide to in excess of $11 billion each. While still dwarfed by Exxon Mobil’s $36 billion net profits in 2005, renewable energy is no longer an “alternative” energy source, but as the president of Fuel Cell Canada put it, a “preferred” energy source.

This year they have included, for the first time, the biofuels industry, which reported revenues to $15.7 billion last year on 9 billion gallons of fuel, the bulk of it from the United States and Brazil. They project the industry will grow to $52 billion by 2015. Solar PV is forecast to reach almost the same level of more than $51 billion by 2015, reported Clean Edge principle Ron Pernick, who along with his partner Joel Makow and Nth Power’s Rodrigo Prudencio and Tim Woodward gave a upbeat assessment of the industry, as a whole. In the case of solar PV, more than 1.5 gigawatts of panels were installed in 2005 alone, which represents more than a 50 percent increase over the previous year.

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