Renewable Energy Trends 2006

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http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=990

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.

For the fifth year in a row, San Francisco-based Clean Edge, in partnership with venture capital fund, Nth Power, issued their annual report on the economic state of the renewable energy industry.

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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