A report out Monday sees non-nuclear clean energy sources growing two-fold over the next ten years, via USA Today.
Published by Clean Edge, a research and advisory firm, the research shows that global revenue for solar photovoltaic (PV) energy, wind power and biofuels surged 35 percent in 2010, growing from $139 billion to $188 billion. The majority of this growth came thanks to global solar PV installations, which more than doubled over the past year, and “steady growth in the biofuels sector.” The market for wind power, notably, saw a modest decline in 2010.
“As witnessed over the past decade, clean tech has proven to be a significant business opportunity, and its growth rates now rival that of earlier technology revolutions like telephony, computers, and the Internet,” said Ron Pernick, Clean Edge co-founder and managing director. “We expect overall growth to slow down in some sectors as the clean-energy market reaches wide adoption and utility- scale deployment, but there’s still considerable room for expansion.”
Global nuclear power generation, meanwhile, is projected by the Department of Energy to grow from 2.6 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2007 to 3.6 trillion kWh in 2020 — an increase of nearly 40 percent — and to 4.5 trillion kWh by 2035, an increase of almost 75 percent. The DOE figures suggest that the world will get about 2.5 times as much energy from nuclear reactors as it does from renewable sources, like wind, solar, biomass and hydroelectric power, which, in our eyes, is kind of a bummer.
















We need to go for at least 10 times growth, not 2. For solar we need a doubling every year.