Mar­ket Growth

Hydro­elec­tric pow­er — boom mar­ket of the present, boom mar­ket of the future

With the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Paris Cli­mate Change Con­ven­tion last Novem­ber, the two world’s lead­ing economies have now agreed to lim­it glob­al warm­ing to less than two degrees Cel­sius and to quit fos­sil fuels.

The Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency (IEA) reports that hydropow­er has already been respon­si­ble for around 16% (3.288 TW) of glob­al elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion and for a remark­able 92% of the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by renew­able ener­gies.

Accord­ing to the Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy Per­spec­tives 2010 IEA BLUE, which aims to halve glob­al ener­gy-relat­ed CO2 emis­sions by 2050 (com­pared to 2005 lev­els), hydropow­er could grow by up to 6,000 TW in 2050, about twice as much as today.

Also in Europe, hydropow­er is the most impor­tant of renew­able resources, and it was respon­si­ble for 46% of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by all renew­able ener­gies in 2012.

Com­po­si­tion of elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion by renew­able ener­gies (20171)

Source: AGEB e.V.

With its Renew­able Ener­gies Direc­tive (2009/28 / EC), the Euro­pean Union (EU) is pro­mot­ing the use of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by new ener­gies and is aim­ing to achieve at least 20% of EU ener­gy con­sump­tion by 2020 Through renew­able ener­gies. As the most impor­tant resource in this area, hydropow­er is like­ly to ben­e­fit most from the asso­ci­at­ed devel­op­ment — and to offer cor­re­spond­ing growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in the com­ing years.

1 Pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion, part­ly esti­mat­ed