Transnational-Renewables Transnational-Renewables

Global Renewable Energy Potential

- Approaches to its Use -

held in Magdeburg, Germany on September 2001

	In my talk I would like to introduce you to the worldwide potentials of renewable electricity production. The techniques we will discuss are electricity production via photovoltaics, solar thermal power plants, hydropower, biomass, hot dry rock geothermal power plants, energy towers and finally we will focus on wind energy. For each of these options of power generation I am going to point out the characteristics with regard to their specific temporal behaviour and the costs to be expected. We will see that the temporal behaviour significantly changes with the size and the selection of the catchment area used for the power generation. We will also touch on the topics of backup and storage needs and the subject of grid capacities. After this I consider wind energy as major source of power production. And last but not least we will reflect on a possible combination of climate protection and development aid.