New energy drives dynamic jobs growth

Canberra Times
Thursday 22/1/2009 Page: 5

One million people will be employed in the world wind-power industry by the end of the decade, despite the impact of the financial crisis, it was forecast this week. Amid predictions that the world would need to install one new turbine every 25 minutes to reach global renewables targets, energy experts at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi said the sector had maintained an almost 30% annual growth rate in 2008 and was heading for further success. The secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, Steve Sawyer, said, "It has been another record year for the industry.

People say these growth rates can't go on forever, but they keep on going on." There had been "dramatic" increases in the United States and China, with the former overtaking Germany as the country with the most installed capacity, he said.

There were now 400,000 people working in the wind-energy sector worldwide and this would increase enormously in future. "We would expect it to reach one million by the end of the decade at least." But the upbeat message came at the same time as a warning from investment bank Goldman Sachs that both wind and solar energy companies faced financial difficulties caused by the continuing crisis. It said that a lack of available financing for wind and solar projects would reduce or delay demand and affect volumes, pricing and profitability.

Goldman said it continued to favour investment in the wind industry in Europe rather than the solar industry, given the former's greater level of maturity, its advantages in terns of scalability, and the future economics of electricity generation. "We believe that the most important thence in 2009 within alternative energy will be a move from severe undersupply to one of at least a more balanced market and potentially serious oversupply," Goldman analyst Jason Channell said.

Goldman's pessimism was not shared by Andrew Garrad, of the wind-power consultancy Garrad Hassan, who was at the Abu Dhabi conference. He said it had been "gobsmacking" to see new schemes in China. One location he had visited was putting in place up to 5GW of new capacity. It was fair to say, he said, that "Europe's domination of wind is over".

Also at the conference, Frank Mastiaux, head of climate and renewables at power utility E.ON, warned that planning problems continued to blight the industry. Only one in five projects that were put forward to authorities in central Europe ended up being built, he said. And while E.ON had been putting up one new turbine every 10 hours on its own, he warned that the world needed one every 25 minutes if it were to reach targets on tackling climate change.