The U.S. Market for Clean Technologies

• Provides an in-depth analysis of “clean” and “cleantech” technologies that use energy, water, raw materials and other inputs more efficiently or create less waste and toxicity
• Contains U.S. market forecasts for clean technologies through 2013
• Identifies the clean technologies with the greatest commercial potential over the next five years
• Discusses environmental benefits of cleantech technologies including reduced energy consumption, conservation of natural resources and reduced waste streams, and economic benefits including lower life-cycle costs for consumers and reduced operating costs for producers
• Analyzes the technical, commercial and other prerequisites of success in the U.S. market
• Considers government regulation that will continue to play an important role in achieving energy and environmental goals.

The study covers technologies that provide producers and end-users with financial/ economic incentives to save energy or produce fewer environmentally harmful wastes or emissions, including:

• Clean energy sources
• Clean energy storage, transmission and distribution technologies
• Fuel cells
• Clean transportation
• Clean computing
• Clean buildings
• Clean manufacturing
• Clean chemicals

The emphasis is on enabling technologies rather than complete products. For example, this study is not concerned with sales of fuel efficient cars per se, but rather with the market for drive trains, storage batteries, control electronics, and lightweight materials technologies that are responsible for cars' fuel efficiency.

The study does not cover technologies that are required to meet government environmental regulations, without regard to cost, such as vehicle catalytic converters and industrial pollution control systems. Ultimately, the technologies covered in this report should have the potential to be commercially self-sustaining, although some form of government subsidy may be required early in the product' s commercial lifetime.

A great many technologies, old and new, go into improving products' energy efficiency and environmental performance. This report focuses on emerging technologies, without trying to be too rigid about defining what constitutes an “emerging” technology (e.g., in terms of the year when it was introduced to the market).

The study focuses on the U.S. market for cleantech. All revenues are reported at the manufacturer level.

The report is based on the results of targeted interviews with producers and users of clean technologies, complemented by a thorough literature review and BCC' s internal data bases. The methodologies and assumptions used to develop the market estimates and projections are described in detail in the chapters on cleantech markets. That way, readers can see how the market estimates were developed and, if they so desire, test the impact on the final numbers of changing assumptions such as price.

There are several other methodological points that should be discussed here. For example, the previous section stated that technologies which must be purchased to meet government regulations, such as catalytic converters, are not considered cleantech for the purposes of this study. But what about government CAFE standards that mandate average fleet-wide levels of fuel efficiency that manufacturers must achieve?

At first glance, the fact that the CAFE standards are driving much of the research into fuel-efficient vehicle technologies might seem to exclude such vehicles from consideration as cleantech. However, because vehicle buyers are not required to meet a particular fuel efficiency threshold, but can choose among vehicles with different fuel efficiencies according to their own personal purchase cost/fuel cost/performance tradeoffs, BCC has included them in this report.

The previous section also stated that technologies that do not have the long-term potential to compete in the market place without subsidization are not, in principle, cleantech. It is sometimes difficult to discern the existence of a subsidy, or to determine whether the subsidy is a short-term expedient needed to build sales and production to levels where they are economical. (Such short-term subsidies are permitted under this report' s definition of clean technology.)

Other subsidies, such as the Federal tax breaks for purchasers of hybrid cars and other energy-saving technologies, are undeniably a factor in the market, but it is difficult to quantify the extent to which they translate into incremental sales. When confronted with such methodological questions, BCC will adopt a pragmatic approach, documenting the issues and explaining its decision whether or not to consider a product as cleantech.