Photovoltaic market growth 2010 statistics

Germany is still the largest photovoltaic market in the world, and photovoltaics are still one of the fastest growing renewable energy sectors. Worldwide photovoltaic installations were expected to rise to 14.2 GW by the end of 2010, but as it turns out this number will likely be around 15,8 GW at the end of 2010.

At the end of the 2009 the total worldwide installed photovoltaic capacity was at 7,2 GW, which means that year 2010 will represent a staggering growth of 119 percent compared to 2009.

The main reason for such tremendous growth was Germany, mostly because German photovoltaic sector grew exceptionally well during the first half of the 2010, when Germany alone installed around 3,9 GW of photovoltaics.

In 2011 things should slow down, and the latest predictions forecast 19.3GW in the beginning of 2011, which is slightly down from previous forecasts that predicted 20,2 GW of photovoltaic installations.

Many energy experts are saying that this slowdown will be actually good thing because it will drive down prices of solar panels, and stimulate bigger demand in the second half of the year. The slowdown in first quarter of the year is actually very common thing for global photovoltaic market, and 2011 will just be following the trend.

Energy analysts predict that this slowdown will cause the decrease of average price for crystalline solar module by around nine percent in the first quarter of 2011, and further six percent in the second quarter.

At the end of 2011 Germany should add 9.4GW of new photovoltaic installations. However, Germany despite being the world's largest photovoltaic market isn't also a world's fastest growing photovoltaic market. UK is currently the fastest growing photovoltaic market in the world, with a total increase of massive 1500% compared to 2009. In 2009, UK had just 6 Megawatts (MW) of PV systems, and this number is expected to grow to 96 MW by the end of 2010.

US natural gas statistics

In 2008 natural gas accounted for 23,8% of US primary energy consumption.

More than 50% of US homes are heated with natural gas.

It is estimated that there are around 1.3 million miles of underground gas pipelines across the United States.

In 2009 in United States, the price of natural gas was little over $4 per thousand cubic feet while in 2008 natural gas had biggest price of more than $13 per thousand cubic feet.

In 2009 United States increased its natural gas production more than any other country in the world. In fact, in 2009 US even managed to overtake Russia as the world's leading natural has producer. According to the EIA, 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was produced in the United States in 2009 which accounts to around 90% of total domestic natural gas consumption.

According to EIA there are 2,587 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas in the United States. U.S. natural gas reserves have been historically concentrated around Texas and the Gulf of Mexico but with the recent shale gas discovery some other US states are expected to play big role as natural gas producers such as New York, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

According to the most recent calculations US accounts for around 3 percent of the world total natural gas reserves.

It is estimated that around 59 percent of the U.S. undiscovered natural gas resources is located on federal lands and offshore waters.

The top natural gas consuming US states are Texas, California and Louisiana.

Natural gas accounts for around 21,5% of electricity generated in United States.

Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming are the top US natural gas producing states accounting to around 80% of total US natural gas production.

95 percent of U.S. natural gas imports are coming from Canada.

Five US states have around one-half of the total US natural gas reserves: Alaska, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

If US continues with current production rates it will have enough natural gas for about a 65-year supply.

There are currently around 288,000 wells in US that are producing natural gas.

In 2008, according to the data from the Natural Gas Supply Association there were approximately four million Americans employed either directly or indirectly by the US natural gas industry.

Natural gas vs wind energy in US

US president Obama was seen by many as the main driving force that will shift US energy policy towards renewable energy sources such as wind power, but after the recent election results, it can be clearly seen that Obama is first of all politician, and not environmentalist as some hoped he is.

After being asked how will US tackle environmental issues at the post-election conference Obama suddenly started mentioning natural gas as a "terrific natural resource" for United States. This was really the last thing that wind energy sector needed, and many wind energy supporters were left bitterly disappointed, not only by Obama's latest view on energy and environment but also about the fact that US can now might as well forget about cap and trade policy.

US solar energy sector is so far looking very good but this cannot be said for wind power industry which is somewhat stagnating. The US wind power industry, despite achieving tremendous growth in the last couple of years, is still standing on shaky legs, and the last thing US wind developers need right now is more focus on natural gas.

Can natural gas really have such a negative impact on further development of wind industry in United States? The answer is yes it can.

First of all natural gas is significantly less polluting compared to coal, and in general the cleanest fossil fuel. Second, a big new shale gas discoveries are coming on line across the US. Third, natural gas can be moved easily through existing pipelines, and their is no need for new expensive transmission infrastructure, and it can be also stored in underground formations.

Wind energy desperately needs new transmission lines in many parts of the US, which comes anything but cheap. Generally speaking transmission system is the main obstacle which wind energy sector will need to overcome in order to continue its rapid growth in years to come.

Wind energy also requires adequate storage solution(s) because wind-generated electricity still cannot be stored. Wind power also suffers from intermittency because wind doesn't blow all the time.

It will be very interesting to see whether federal and state governments will ensure adequate funds to create better transmission system for wind-generated electricity.

Without big money US wind power industry will not be able to compete with natural gas, regardless of environmental benefits. Therefore, it's really no wonder that Obama has jumped on natural gas bandwagon, after all he's politician, and from political point of view natural gas currently seems as the more acceptable option.

US ethanol fuel statistics

United States is world's leading producer of ethanol. In 2008 United States produced 9 billion U.S. liquid gallons of ethanol fuel, and 10.6 billion U.S. liquid gallons of ethanol fuel in 2009. This represents around 55% of world's total ethanol production.

The ethanol market share in the U.S. gasoline supply was little less than 8% in 2009.

Portland, Oregon, was the first city in the United States that required all gasoline sold within city limits to contain at least 10% ethanol.

At the end of 2009 US had 189 ethanol distilleries in operation.

Most US ethanol is produced from corn. Current estimates say that around 36% of corn produced in 2010/11 will go to produce ethanol.

US ethanol industry currently employs around 210,000 people. The record year was 2005 when US ethanol industry created more than 150,000 new jobs.

There are currently around 2400 stations in the United States that sell E85 (the most common blend of ethanol).

It was estimated that around 21 percent of U.S. ethanol production capacity was shut down in 2009 because of financial crisis.

At the end of 2008 there were around eight million E85-compatible vehicles on U.S. roads.

Iowa is the nation's largest ethanol producer, followed by Nebraska and Illinois. Iowa represents 26% of nation's total ethanol production with around 3.5 billion gallons.

US ethanol industry has projected 45 billion litres of ethanol production for the year 2010.

US electricity statistics

Renewable energy sources such as biomass, hydropower and wind power currently satisfy around 11% of US electricity demand.

Hydropower accounts for the most electricity coming from renewables in US with 6,8% of US total electricity use.

US is the world's largest consumer and producer of electricity, followed by China and Japan. In the January 2010, US had total electricity generation of 3992 billion KWh while China had 3715 billion KWh.

In the first half of 2010 the electricity coming from wind power increased by 21.4%, and electricity from solar power by 16.4% in US.

Coal currently generates around 49% of US total electricity. This is because coal still remains the cheapest fuel when it comes to operating costs. In the last 40 years the use of coal to generate electricity in the U.S. has nearly tripled because of the rapidly growing electricity demand.

Nuclear power plants currently generate around 20% of US electricity. The average US nuclear power plant generates around 12.4 billion kWh.

It is expected that solar power, with the current growth, could account by more than 4% of US electricity by 2020.

According to the data from 2008 the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 11,040 kWh, an average of 920 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month. Tennessee had the highest annual consumption at 15,624 kWh and Maine the lowest at 6,252 kWh.

More than 17% of generated electricity in US is used for cooling and ventilation.

Around 13,5% of total U.S. electricity consumption goes to lightning.

Texas is the nation's largest electricity consumer followed by California, Florida, Ohio and New York. In 2008 Texas consumed 347,050 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Nation's lowest electricity consumer is the state of Vermont, followed by Alaska and Rhode Island.

Computers account for around 3% of US total electricity consumption.

Hawaii is the US state with the lowest estimated average residential electricity consumption per person with 2,382 kilowatt-hours in 2008.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that US electricity demand will grow by 41% by 2030.

Nevada geothermal energy statistics

Nevada is currently the second largest geothermal energy producer in United States, behind California, with the capacity of around 450 MW at the end of 2009.

Nevada is ranked first in the nation in installed geothermal energy capacity on a per-person basis.

Nevada currently has 86 planned or developing geothermal power stations (the largest number in the US) which should add up to 3.68 gigawatts to the state’s energy production within the next decade.

Fourteen geothermal power plants are at this moment in latter stages of development in the state, and these projects alone would create close to 1500 green jobs in Nevada.

Nevada has generated around $44 million from Bureau of Land Management geothermal leasing activities.

Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) predicts that Nevada's geothermal industry worth would be up to $22.5 billion over the next 30 years.

Nevada currently has more than 630,000 acres of BLM land leased to geothermal developers.

In 2009 Nevada had 19 operational geothermal power plants.

It is expected that 1,500 megawatts of geothermal power could be produced in Nevada by 2015.

Does renewable energy guarantee energy security?

Renewable energy is not only an environmentally friendly option but using more renewable energy would also improve our energy security. Many energy experts would agree with the sentence above but not all of them. While all energy experts would agree that renewable energy is indeed much more environmentally friendly option compared to fossil fuels, not all would agree that using renewable energy would significantly improve our energy security, at least not given the current situation. Why is that?

Many renewable energy technologies require a lot of rare metals for their production, for instance several very rare metals are needed to make photovoltaic panels, while some rare earth magnets are needed to construct wind generators, fuel cells and high-capacity batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.

Renewable energy still doesn't guarantee energy security.

United States, as well as many other industrialized nations are heavily dependent on foreign import for these rare metals. Gallium, indium, selenium, tellurium, and high purity silicon are all needed to make photovoltaic panels and they are all rare and expensive metals.

In the worst possible scenario this would mean that US would practically swap its dependence on foreign oil import with the foreign metal import in order to further develop its domestic renewable energy sector.

Such solution certainly wouldn't do much good in terms of improving domestic energy security because US, as well as most developed countries would depend upon importing these rare metals from China.

China is currently the dominant world supplier of those rare earth elements but since China has already started huge renewable energy expansion Chinese could soon have little or none of these metals to export which could even stop a further development of renewable energy technologies on global scale.

This is the main reason why global renewable energy sector desperately needs new sources of these precious but rare metals. Depending solely on China will soon not be enough, not with its rapid expansion of different renewable energy projects across the country.

Many countries will need to invest more in mining because this could soon become the only way to remain competitive on global renewable energy market. This means that domestic exploration and mining that are usually associated with fossil fuels could also become crucial part of renewable energy future for many countries of the world.