Renewable energy

Cedar Creek Wind Farm project and BP's Sherbino Wind Farm construction

Renewable energy includes energy derived from natural processes that do not involve the consumption of exhaustible resources such as fossil fuels and uranium

Hydropower, wind and wave power, solar and geothermal energy and combustible renewables and renewable waste (landfill gas, waste incineration, solid biomass and liquid biofuels) are the constituents of renewable energy.

Large-scale hydro power generation and non-commercial combustible renewables and renewable waste are sometimes excluded from this definition, leaving small-scale hydro, wind and wave power, solar and geothermal energy and modern biomass energy, including ethanol, as more narrowly defined renewable energy.

The definition of Primary Energy in the Statistical Review confines itself to traded fuels (commercial renewables). Among fuels such as combustible renewables and renewable waste, only ethanol is included in the Statistical Review, because other sources of bioenergy are not reliably documented. Geothermal, wind and solar forms of renewable energy are better documented, but for these we only include data on installed capacity. The energy produced – either in the form of electricity or heat – is not included in the Primary Energy table.

Despite high growth rates, renewable energy still represents only a small part of today’s global energy picture. Geothermal, wind and solar electricity generation combined, is estimated to account for approximately 1.5% of global electricity generation.

At the country level, however, these sources are playing an increasingly important role in some countries, and they make significant contributions to growth in electricity generation. For example, wind power generation has a significant share in total electricity generation in Denmark (around 20%), Spain (around 11%) and Germany (around 7%); geothermal sources account for approximately one quarter of total electricity generated in El Salvador and one fifth of all electricity in the Philippines, Kenya, and in Iceland.

Contribution to Electricity Generation Growth from Renewables*

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The global renewable energy industry continued to expand rapidly in 2008, with growth rates accelerating across all the technologies. Traditionally Europe and Japan have been the leaders in renewable development, on the back of generous government incentives, but now the US and China have joined in with significant investments in wind capacity in 2008. The renewable energy industry is rapidly gaining importance in terms of contribution to the economic activity and employment.

Data on renewable energy are not included in the published BP Statistical Review of World Energy because of problems with the completeness, timeliness and quality of the data. However, the data on installed capacity for geothermal, wind and solar power generation and data on global ethanol production are published on the Statistical Review internet site. Data on hydropower generation are excluded from the renewables section of the BP statistical Review. They are covered in a separate section in the published version.

The Statistical Review internet site also includes links to relevant external internet sources and should help illustrate some of the key trends in renewable energy.