RENEWABLE ENERGY - IS THERE A FASTER GROWING MARKET IN THE WORLD?
Representatives from Wagga Wagga City Council recently attended the EcoGen Conference in Sydney at Darling Harbour on 7-8 September which featured exhibits from a range of businesses involved in the renewable energy market and presentations by prominent people in the industry and from politicians including Christine Milne and Greg Hunt.
The general message from the conference was that the industry was growing incredibly fast world-wide, and growth in Australia was also strong despite what were characterised as stop-start policies from State and Federal governments on renewable energy policy. In 2010 the solar industry in Australia is expected to instal 250 MW, which is twice the capacity that it installed in 2009, according to Ric Brazzale of Green Enery Trading. Further, he projects that there is a need for 11,000 MW of new renewable energy capacity by 2020 in order to reach the government's mandated target of 20% of energy consumption being from renewable energy by 2020. This equates to some $3 billion of investment per year in large scale renewable energy.
