It’s Not Easy Being Green… But It’s Getting Easier!

Today, I want to talk about ‘Green Technology’ - new innovative technologies, which are clean and sustainable, allowing us to fulfil our desires whilst being less harmful to the environment. These technologies can range from generating energy to non-toxic cleaning products. As this is such a big field, this post will simply focus on understanding the size of the clean technology market, and two of the biggest contributors to it – small businesses in the developing world and electric cars.

The above graph (World Bank, 2014) illustrates just how substantial growth in green technology has been. Research has shown that the clean technology market has grown at an average of 12% per year since 2007, and this growth has withstood the worldwide financial turmoil left in the wake of the credit crisis (Ayre, 2012). In 2012, the clean technology market was estimated to be valued at over $5.5 trillion and forecasted to grow at 4.1% until 2016. Industrialised, developed countries seem to have large shares of clean tech market e.g. Germany at 15%. Clean tech also seems to be firmly established in these economies, with the market generating 11% of Germany’s GDP, employing over 1.4 million people.

So, what about developing economies?

Well, the World Bank has actually identified a huge opportunity for clean technology for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries, particularly in the wastewater industry! It is estimated that the SME clean technology market in developing countries can generate as much as $1.6 trillion. Potential market sizes are as follows:

• Latin America - $349 billion
• Africa - $235 billion

As shown below, Africa in fact has the largest growth in clean technology sales:

In India and Kenya, there has been increased investment in Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA). Whilst agriculture is a large contributor to GDP, it has many environmental challenges. So, the government and various donors have collaborated with SMEs to come up with innovative agricultural activities that align with CSA goals, such as, drip irrigation, food storage and agroforestry.

Companies are increasingly thinking about their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and how and what they can give back. This has previously been done through volunteering schemes for activities such as building schools. Now CSR seems to focus more on sustainability and thinking about how their processes and projects affect the environments, and how to minimise such effects.

In 2011, James Stanier asserted that the top eco-friendly corporation was Honda, a car company. The Electronic Vehicle (EV) market has faced significant growth, which is why I want to focus on it for the remainder of this post, to show you just how big clean green technology can be! EV sales have increased exponentially and are projected to increase even more so (International Energy Agency, 2013).

However, this market is mainly based in developed countries, with the US, Japan and France taking a lead in EV stocks, although China is not far behind as seen from this graph:

More people in developed countries are taking an interest in EVs, with sales more than doubling between 2011 and 2012. The Guardian (2014) stated that in the UK alone, Alternatively Fuelled Vehicles (AFVs) registrations rose by 56% between September 2013 and September 2014, accounting for 2.3% of the total market. EVs in the UK have even more outstanding results. Pure electric and plug in hybrid vehicles saw the greatest growth between 2013 and 2014, at 181% and 454% respectively!

In the UK, at the beginning of 2014, 500 electric cars were being registered; this has now risen to an average of 2,400 EV registrations per month. This is show in the graph below (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, 2015):

Furthermore, an electric vehicle, the Nissan Leaf, was actually voted as car of the year in the UK, with more than 9,300 vehicles registered by the end of June 2015. The EV market is expected to reach approximately $110 billion by 2019, however, this may be a little hampered by falling oil prices (Business Green, 2015).  I won’t subject you to any more graphs, however, I will leave you with the thought of just how huge the green technology market could be, and how much economic growth it could stimulate.