‘Clean energy’ markets grow despite sluggish economy

Clean Edge Inc., a San Francisco-based research firm that tracks and analyzes clean-technology markets and trends, reports a 40 percent expansion in revenue growth for biofuels, winds, solar photovoltaics and fuel cells in 2007, from $55.4 billion in 2006 to $77.3 billion in 2007.

The firm’s Clean-Energy Trends 2008 report also finds that new global investments in energy technologies, including venture capital, project finance, public markets and research and development have grown 60 percent, from $92.6 billion in 2006 to $148.4 billion in 2007.

Despite the challenging economic outlook, clean energy technologies are now mainstream and show no signs of a slowdown in 2008.

According to Clean Edge research:

--Biofuels (including global production and wholesale pricing of ethanol and biodiesel) reached $25.4 billion in 2007 and are projected to grow to $81.1 billion by 2017. In 2007 the global biofuels market consisted of more than 13 billion gallons of ethanol and 2 billion gallons of biodiesel production worldwide.

--Wind power (new installation capital costs) is projected to expand from $30.1 billion in 2007 to $83.4 billion in 2017. Last year’s global wind power installations reached a record 20,000 MW worldwide, equivalent to 20 large-size 1 GW conventional power plants.

--Solar photovoltaics (including modules, system components and installation) will grow from a $20.3 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017. Annual installations reached nearly 3 GW worldwide, up almost 500 percent from just four years ago.

--The fuel cell and distributed hydrogen market will grow from $1.5 billion (primarily for research contracts and demonstration and test units) to $16 billion within 10 years.

Clean Edge projects the combined market for these four benchmark technologies to grow to $254.5 billion during the next decade.