 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Major advances in recent year-are have led to improvements in efficiency of renewable energy technologies and reductions in costs. These developments, the establishment of the Global Environment Facility in 1991, and the World Bank's operational initiatives on environmentally sustainable development are providing new opportunities for the finance of renewable energy investments.
This is the first in a series of reports on renewables. It reviews the cost and status of renewable energy technologies, concentrating on the use of biomass for fuel and electricity, solar-thermal technologies, and photovoltaics. Parallel studies currently under way in the Bank include one on costs and markets and others reporting on operating experience with renewable energy technologies in various countries and regions.
These studies resect the growing interest of the World Bank Group in renewable energy technologies. There are three reasons for this interest. First, from an economic point of view, renewables have good prospects of giving good returns to investment, and indeed they are already economically attractive for an increasing number of small-scale applications. With further development, large-scale applications should follow. That renewables generally have short lead times is another economically attractive feature. Second, as many have noted, solar schemes m particular are environmentally attractive. Third, renewable energy technologies are well-suited to the circumstances of developing countries. For example, because most developing countries are in tropical or subtropical regions, their levels of incident solar energy per square kilometer are twice the levels found in many industrial countries; moreover, the day to day quality of the insolation is superior, and seasonal variations are less.
This report is also among the first in a new Energy Series within the ongoing World Bank technical papers volumes. The new Energy Series technical papers will replace the Industry and Energy Department's "pink" series energy working papers. We are making this shift to take advantage of the World Bank's global distribution network for what we believe will be publications of significance and widespread interest
Richard Stem
Director
Industry and Energy
Department
 |
 |
