http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=27302&catid=679Electrical production capacity has had historically an energy mix consisting primarily of fossil fuels including gas, coal and oil, backed up with a volume of nuclear and hydro power.
The EU-27 countries are trying to lower carbon emissions, and build an interconnected, efficient energy system. New targets have been created by the EC that request that by 2020 the EU-27 countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% (compared with 1990 levels) by 2020; improve energy efficiency by 20% by 2020; raise the share of renewable energy to 20 % by 2020; increase the level of biofuels in transport fuel to 10% by 2020.
In trying to meet these objectives, a new energy market is beginning to evolve. Recent addition has been made to the energy mix by way of renewable energy technologies which include power from the wind - wind turbines, and power from the sun - solar cells, and geothermal – relying on the heat that can be found at varying degrees of depth into the Earth’s surface. In the last decade newly installed renewable energy technologies are starting to gain a notable share of the market.
Key findings
• Germany has the largest volume of installed renewable energy technology topping the market in wind and solar, the two field leading technologies. Germany has installed around 2 GW of grid connected solar photovoltaics annually for the last two years.
• Hydroelectric power makes up almost two thirds of the current renewable energy electrical generation market.
• Geothermal energy only utilized for electricity generation in Italy, Iceland, Portugal and Turkey. The market share of geothermal capacity only accounts for 1% of the total installed capacity. Iceland makes up 61% of the geothermal market share.
• In terms of market share, the annual installed capacity of wind has grown from 0% in 1995 to 30% in 2007.
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