About a quarter of the examined patent applications were published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office; the Chinese patent office is second by popularity with another 19% of published documents. These countries were also among the leaders of solar energy production in 2015. Nearly a third of the patent applications were published in regional patent offices: the World Intellectual Property Organization (17%) and the...

Wind energy today is the principal moving force of renewable energy development. According to REN21 international association and its latest report named RENEWABLES 2016 GLOBAL STATUS REPORT, in 2015 wind energy capacities exceeded 430 GW, which comprises about 55% of all electrical power generating renewable energy facilities in the world, excluding hydro power. The innovative activities of inventors make considerable contribution to...

Development of wind energy all over the globe continues at a steady pace and, according to the forecast of World Wind Energy Association, in 2015 total installed capacities will exceed 400 GW. China remains absolute leader in this process, with the USA and Germany coming after. However, markets are rapidly developing in other countries as well, particularly in India, United Kingdom and Brazil. The present review evaluates the latest...

Wind energy is the most intensively developing sector of renewable energy industry. The total amount of electrical power generated by wind turbines, according to multiple estimations, already exceeds 3% of the aggregate global power production. This process involves dozens of countries; hundreds of manufacturers of wind turbines and components; several thousands of wind park developers and operators. Amongst other things, such...

In recent years cellulosic ethanol production rates have tended to demonstrate moderate growth. This technology makes it possible to avoid using food crops for the production of energy carrier that can be used as an additive for conventional types of fuel. During the last decade ethanol production technologies have become widely used in the USA, Brazil and the European Union, while total volumes of ethanol produced in 2015 exceeded 25...

Production of cellulosic ethanol is steadily increasing, but still can't compete with conventional bioethanol technologies. However, inventors' patenting activity in this sector remains high. The present review includes analysis of patent applications on cellulosic ethanol production that were published in 2015 in the major patent offices of the world. For the current year we have found 341 patent applications related to one or other...