Pike Research, a market research and consulting company, has declared the availability of its first yearly ‘Fuel Cells Annual Report’, which examines the present status of the worldwide fuel cell industry, the growth drivers and barriers experienced by the industry, where it will be placed in 2017 and why the year 2015 is said to be a vital factor for the industry.
According to the report, the fuel cell industry is undergoing its transformation from an R&D subject to a marketable commercial product due its deployment in various application segments such as reliable grid connectivity, low-carbon emitting transportation, and use at off-grid mobile sites and for supplementing residential power usage. Though the profit margin of the industry continues to remain low, a small number of producers have taken the required corrective steps to make the industry profitable.
The study finds that between the years 2008 to 2010, the industry achieved a CAGR of around 27% thus falling short of its anticipated growth while the revenue from the industry increased admirably to around $670 million in 2010 from $260 million in 2008, an increase of over 250%. The research anticipates that the industry will witness a speeded up growth from the beginning of 2012 and anticipates a strong growth during the next six years to achieve a revenue of over $28 billion by 2017. The research covered over 30 sectors such as portable, stationary and transport in its coverage.
The report finds that though the transport sector has received the utmost attention from the media, the development in the stationary fuel sector will push it back and it substantiates its claims by stating that in the year 2010 more than 50% of all the fuel cell systems were deployed for stationary usages. The study points out that the stationary fuel cell technology has been successfully adopted in segments such as hotels, hospitals, combined heat and power (CHP) plants, telecommunication base stations and residential units.
The study points out that since the first fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is anticipated to be launched only 2015, it will take several years for the industry to achieve notable volumes of fuel cell usage in the transportation sector.