The share of renewable energy sources is growing every year. There are several reasons that accelerate this growth. First, the tightening laws introduce mechanisms to limit the use of non-environmentally friendly energy sources. Secondly, the development of technologies for the generation, supply and storage of energy from the sun, wind, water and other sources lead to an increase in economic efficiency. These are the two major drivers that are projected to result in a 30 percent renewable energy share by 2022.
Among the main types of renewable energy are thermal energy, wind energy, solar energy, hydropower and others. The value chain for this energy class is as follows: R&D, Module and Inverter Production, Installation, Generation and Sales, Retail Customer Relationship. The market can be classified as follows: Commercial, Industrial, Transportation, Public and Residential.
We conducted research on the leaders of the renewable energy market and found some trends. Only a company with negative market cap growth has no patent. R&D is one of the priority directions of their strategy for future years. The desire to protect intellectual property does not depend on the company’s generated capacity. Leaders conduct their R&D in the 2 fields: components for renewable energy devices (batteries, solar panels, etc.), computing and calculation. NextEra is going to spend 1B dollars on battery projects. It will be the first company in the world to cross that threshold for energy storage investments in a single year. At the same time, the company is going to significantly increase the generated capacity. VivoPower also announced start their activities in the field of energy storage. Thus, RE future depends on economically competitive energy storage solution.