Clean Edge releases new forecast of clean energy markets

Clean Edge, a Berkeley consultancy focused on clean technologies, has just released their latest forecast of clean energy markets, and the results are again encouraging.

Clean Edge has reason to be a bit of a booster for clean energy, but Joel Makower and his team over there are very sharp, and even just looking at what happened over the last year is -- to a cleantech investor, at least -- pretty exciting.

Their data shows that:

- The worldwide market for solar PV grew from $4.7B in 2003 to $7.2B in 2004 (they forecast it to grow to $39.2B by 2014).
- Wind stayed steady at about $8B for both '03 and '04 (they forecast $48B by 2014).
- Fuel cells and hydrogen markets are already a $900M market (they forecast $15B by 2014).

The 10-year timeframe for the forecasts is a bit long for venture investors to be counting on, but these are already big markets today. Solar in particular appears to be poised to become as important and established in the energy market as wind already is.

Now, how much of that is driven by regulatory and not market forces? Well, that's a post for another day. But this is an important and encouraging study.