Robert Bucher is Director, President and CEO of Sustainable Energy Technologies, who manufactures and distributes power inverters for grid-connected solar PV systems. Bucher has more than 23 years of executive level experience with major U.S. and Canadian companies such as Measurex and Honeywell, each a global leader over the past 30 years in systems and products for industrial sectors including energy and utilities, process and capital goods manufacturing. Bucher expects a dramatic rebound of the renewable energy industry in 2010 in the range of 20%-30% growth rates.

By Jeanny Lim

Could you please update us on the global trends in renewable energy investment? What are the future prospects for investment?

We’re seeing a movement towards government sponsored feed-in tariffs. They are becoming more predominant and are directing investment into particular areas of renewable energy and particular approaches, primarily, distributed generation. What this is promoting is looking at maximum power for investment dollar vs. maximum energy output on the particular site. Internal rate of return is becoming the dominant factor in terms of investment criteria.

How much investment has been made into the renewable energy industry in your country/region? And what are the future prospects?

Sustainable Energy Technologies is a Canadian-based solar company and we will be manufacturing our inverters out of Ontario in 2010. Ontario has seen dramatic growth in alternative energy investment. It’s hard to say what the total will be, but the alternate energy or renewables-based expectation will be between 500 MW to 1 GW on a yearly basis for the next few years.

How has the global economic crisis been affecting the renewable energy industry? Is there a specific technology sector that has been affected more severely? And is there a specific geographical region that has been affected more severely?

We are seeing the non-regulated markets being affected. They are looked at as a pure capital investment rather than a directed feed-in tariff generating a long-term cash flow. Therefore, they are more susceptible to the global economic malaise, especially due to credit tightening. Additionally, because of the slowdown in 2008, we’re seeing dramatically reduced system pricing. The investment return vs. the products margins have gotten out of whack providing more than lucrative returns for the investor and very skinny returns for the product supplier. This imbalance cannot be maintained in a healthy industry.

How much growth do you expect for the renewable energy industry?

We’re going to see a dramatic rebound in 2010 in the range of 20%-30% growth rates. We should see tempering off over the next few years but continued double-digit growth.

Jeanny Lim is Editor-in-Chief of InterPV. Send your comments to swied@infothe.com.

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