New report on the state of the art of the strategic energy technologies

The JRC has published a new edition of the Strategic Energy Technologies review. This "2011 Technology Map" provides a European and worldwide analysis of 15 low-carbon energy technologies, energy efficiency in industry, energy performance of buildings and electricity storage in the power sector.

The study describes the state of the art of the different technologies, current and estimated market penetration, barriers to their large-scale deployment, planned R&D efforts to overcome those barriers and reference values for their operational and economic performance. It provides data covering the whole spectrum of the energy system, allowing policy makers and the research community to identify potential opportunities and gaps to achieve the transition to a low-carbon society. A necessary condition for the timely market roll-out of some of these technologies is an acceleration of their development and demonstration.
Compared with the 2009 Technology Map, the steep increase of wind and solar (photovoltaics) generation capacity in the EU and worldwide is to be highlighted. On a global scale, hydropower continues to be the technology most widely used, providing 88% of electricity generated from renewable sources.