Global Markets and Trends for Renewables

Abstract

Since the first oil crisis in the 1970s, technologies to use renewable energy (RE) have been developed and improved significantly, and the importance of these resources in the production of electricity, heat, and fuels has increased continuously. For each renewable energy source a unique set of technologies has developed bringing with it different forms of application. Although wind energy and solar energy have developed strongly in the past few years (especially in China, Germany, the USA, Brazil, India, and Japan), they still account for less than 1 % of primary energy consumption worldwide. So far, traditional biomass application and hydropower are the most commonly used REs, and they will retain their frontrunner position in the near future. Against this backdrop the following chapter aims to give an overview of the current usage of RE—worldwide, in the EU, North America, Asia, and the rest of the world. Furthermore, an outlook on the potential development of the different RE technologies up to 2020 is given.

A previous version of this chapter has been published in Herbes, C.; Friege, Chr. (Hrsg): Marketing Erneuerbarer Energien. Grundlagen, Geschäftsmodelle, Fallbeispiele, 2015, Springer Gabler.