Solar collectors displace 6

PARIS, France, 2004-07-14 Refocus Weekly

The world has installed more than 100 million square metres of solar thermal collectors, which are reducing CO2 emissions by 18 megatonnes a year.

The milestone was achieved in 2001, according to a report from the International Energy Agency, ‘Solar Heating Worldwide: Markets & Contributions to the Energy Supply 2001’ produced by its Solar Heating & Cooling Programme. The report is based on data from 26 countries, representing 90% of the world's solar thermal market.

The leading country is China, with 32 million m2, of which 20.8 million m2 was evacuated tube and 11.2 million m2 of glazed water collectors. The United States was in second place, with 25 million m2, of which 22.9 million was unglazed water collectors, 1.4 million of glazed and 551,000 of evacuated tube and 227,000 million of glazed air collectors.

Japan was third, with 12 million m2, of which almost all were glazed water collectors. Turkey was in fourth place with 8.1 million m2 and Israel in five spot with 3.9 million m2, all of which were glazed water collectors.

Globally, glazed collectors comprise almost half of the market for collectors at 49 million m2 and are used for heating swimming pools. Another 27.7 million m2 are for unglazed and 22.3 million m2 for evacuated tube collectors, both of which are used for domestic hot water preparation and space heating. Of air collectors, 1.3 million m2 are unglazed and 270,000 m2 are glazed.

“Since the beginning of the 1990s, the solar thermal market has undergone a favourable development,” says the report. The majority of collectors in the U.S. were installed in the 1980s and most will be taken out of operation within the next decade as they reach the end of their lifespan.

By comparison, most systems in Europe and China have been installed within the past ten years.

Israel is the largest per capita user of water collectors, with 608 m2 per 1,000 inhabitants, followed by Greece (298) and Austria (220), while Switzerland, Canada and the Netherlands have collector areas of between 28 and 10 m2 per 1,000 inhabitants.

Between 2000 and 2001, flat plate and evacuated tube installations increased by 26%, and the annual collector yield of all solar thermal systems installed by 2001 in the 26 countries was 41,795 GWh (150,463 TJ) which corresponds to an oil equivalent of 6.7 billion litre per year. The avoided emission of CO2 from all collectors is estimated at 18.2 million tons.

http://www.iea-shc.org/outputs/activities/iea_shc_solar_heating_worldwide_2001.pdf

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