LONDON, UK , March 14, 2007.
Global revenues from clean energy will increase to US$226.5 billion by 2016, up from $55 billion last year.
In its annual report, Clean Edge says the market for biofuels will quadruple to $81 billion from $21 billion last year, while revenues for solar power will grow to $69 billion from $16 billion, wind to $61 billion from $18 billion and fuel cells will rise to $16 billion in 2016 from $1.4 billion last year.
“Maybe it was the changing global climate, or perhaps the changing business climate, that fuelled clean-energy markets in 2006,” the report notes. “More than likely it was both of these, among several other factors, that pushed markets for solar, wind, fuel cells, biofuels, and other energy technologies along their inexorable upward march.”
“We have reached the point where the steady and rapid growth of clean energy has become an old story,” it continues. “Each year, it seems, brings an ever-higher plateau of success. This appears to be the future of clean energy: a rolling series of technology breakthroughs, landmark corporate investments, industry consolidation, and the not-infrequent emergence of new and sometimes surprising players entering the field.”
Since publication of its first Clean Energy Trends report in 2002, the consulting firm has found that markets for four benchmark technologies continue a “healthy climb” with annual revenue for the four technologies up 39% in one year, from $40 billion in 2005 to $55 billion last year. Last year “marked the year that even the most ardent nay-sayers about global climate change began to change their tune, and scientists, investors, business leaders, and politicians moved the conversation from whether climate change was occurring to what we are going to do about it.”
“That acceptance of climate change as ‘real’ helped to unlock latent interest in clean-energy technologies on the part of corporate and political leaders,” it notes. “In Washington and other capitals, clean energy is now a bipartisan issue; in corporate boardrooms, it is fast becoming an imperative.”
Among the developments which clean energy definitively on the map over the past year are a tripling in venture investments in energy technologies in the U.S. to $2.4 billion, a new level of commitment by U.S. politicians at all levels, and significant corporate investments in clean energy acquisitions and expansion initiatives.
The report says Wal-Mart is likely to be a driving force behind future expansion, as the retail firm plans a major drive to install green power generation in its stores, which likely will result in huge orders for the technologies. “Could Wal-Mart do for renewables what it already has done for everything from laptops to lingerie: make them affordable by the masses?” the report asks.
U.S. venture capital investment in energy technology has tripled from $917 million in 2005 to $2.4 billion in 2006, while the percentage of total VC investment being put into energy has risen from 4.2% to 9.4% during the year. Over the last seven years, venture investments in energy technologies have increased from less than 1% of total venture investments to nearly 10%.
