Clean energy market on a high

The market for clean energy products is growing among India’s rural poor, a massive segment that consists of 114 million households and more than 60 percent of the nation’s population of 1.15 billion. Since 2004, this market has grown at an average rate of 36 percent a year and could eventually grow to more than $2.1 billion annually, according to a report from World Resources Institute.

Cean energy services and products will require an upfront investment three to ten times greater than that for conventional energy sources such as kerosene and firewood, which often are subsidized or free to India’s rural consumers. Yet despite these and other drawbacks, the average annual gross revenue of the companies profiled in this report has grown 36 percent since 2004.

The report examined a representative selection of companies selling solar lanterns, solar home systems, energy-efficient cookstoves, and electricity generated from decentralized sources, including small hydro power plants and biomass gasifier systems. The potential market for the four sectors studied in this report is INR 97.28 billion (US$2.11 billion) per year, including INR 94.06 billion (US$2.04 billion) for decentralized renewable energy services and INR 3.22 billion (US$70.1 million) for energy products per year.

Good news for the poor, corporates and the planet.