Austrian Exporters' Opportunities and Difficulties The European Solar Energy Market. Linking Sustainability with Profitabiliy - Study Case:

Globally, the solar power industry is over USD $10 billion per year and growing 30%-40% annually, even faster than wind power. 166,167 Depending on the choices we make,168 world electricity production from solar sources is expected to grow anywhere from fiftyfold to nearly two thousandfold by 2050, cornering some 0%-13% of the worldБЂ™s electricity market. That zero was not a typo. This is all very exciting and will surely inspire many investor fortunes in the stock market. But if youБЂ™ve been adding up the numbers as we went along, youБЂ™ve already figured something out: Fast-growing as they are, the blunt truth is that the clean, renewable energy sources weБЂ™d all love to haveБЂ”wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, tidal, and (sustainably grown) biomassБЂ”are in no position to replace nonrenewable sources by 2050.169 Despite blistering growth, by 2050 solar energy will just be starting to substantially dent our energy needs. It takes time to grow from a base of near-zero. Our present capacity is so minuscule that a fiftyfold increase of solar power in the next four decades will still supply about 0% of the worldБЂ™s electricity ...»