Fuel Cell Shipments to Exceed 5 Million Units (per year) by 2013

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http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage9520.html

Fuel cell shipments will exceed 5 million units per year by 2013 according to Fuel Cell Today’s latest Industry Review, Fuel Cells: Emerging Markets. The Review, published today, reports that 2008 saw shipments of 18,000 units mainly in the portable and stationary sectors. In a series of exclusive five year forecasts, the Fuel Cell Today analysts anticipate that fuel cell shipments will substantially increase in key markets such as uninterruptible power supplies; combined cooling, heating and power; and fuel cells for portable devices. Furthermore Fuel Cell Today anticipates considerable uptake of fuel cells in key non-traditional ‘emerging market’ regions such as India, Latin America and the Middle East.
Drawing on recent developments in the portable fuel cell sector and in fuel cells for backup power, Fuel Cell Today anticipates that there will increasingly be a move from a supply-driven to a demand-driven model, with associated cost reduction and mass production driving further uptake. This trend will be particularly evident in the emerging market regions, where the potential for rapid and vast adoption of fuel cell technology is met with low cost manufacturing bases and sources of investment funds. All of this adds up to a substantial opportunity for emerging market regions to remove the current lead of established market such as Europe, Japan and North America.

Three of the largest emerging markets are India, with its tiger economy status, the Middle East, with its desire to iversify its economies, and Latin American nations with their vast resources of renewable energy. Each of these regions, featured in depth in the Review using independent analytical information unique to Fuel Cell Today, has a different suite of drivers for change, but all could start to see uptake and diffusion of fuel cell technology in the next five years, making a substantial share of the predicted 5 million units shipped by 2013. The Review also contains summaries of ten other emerging market regions, which could see substantial uptake in the next five years, as well as a survey of hydrogen feedstock choice – an increasingly flexible one as a variety of fuel reformers for hydrogen production

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