Renewable, environmentally friendly sources of energy make up just two per cent of the global energy market but are growing and production will equal that of oil and natural gas by 2040, the World Petroleum Congress was told.

'The oil industry may be seriously underestimating the potential of renewable energy to be a large part of the energy market in the years to come. And it does so at its own peril,' said Christopher Flavin, the president of the Worldwatch Institute.
'It seems there is a concept that real energy men don't do renewables,' said Flavin. 'But that is changing.'
Flavin said $24 billion was being invested in the industry this year, the largest part by major corporations that do see the potential.
Jeremy Bentham, vice president of Shell's hydrogen business, told the congress that the production of renewable sources of energy would equal that of natural gas in 25 years and that of petroleum by 2040.
Renewable sources of energy include wind, solar power, biomass, geothermal, hydro-electric, hydrogen and energy from ocean resources.
Flavin said oil accounts for about 30 per cent of the global energy market now, while renewables make up just two per cent.
But he said wind power was growing at an average rate of 30 per cent a year, solar power at 23 per cent a year while the growth in fossil fuels was about two per cent a year.
Norway gets 45 per cent of its total energy requirement from renewable sources and Sweden 25 per cent. Flavin said that increasingly countries are creating economic incentives for the use of renewable energy sources and that the incentives are reducing the cost at the same time that the prices of oil and natural gas were soaring.
Bentham said the desire for some energy independence and the need to reduce air pollution in cities were major factors in the drive to increase the use of renewable energy.
Europe must import 50 per cent of it oil today and that will increase to 85 per cent by 2030, said Bentham. He said the forecasts call for the United States to import 20 per cent of its natural gas in the future when today it doesn't have to import any.
'With fair and good incentives we can have solar power competitive in 10 years time,' said Bentham.
John Gass, president of Chevron Global Gas, told the congress that while oil would remain the dominant energy source in the short term, the role of natural gas was growing rapidly worldwide.
'Natural gas has very much come of age. In the past 20 years, demand for natural gas has increased 70 per cent,' said Gass.
George Verberg, president of the International Gas Union, said that the cost of LNG was coming down and that it would change the nature of the market for the commodity from a regional one to a global one.
The high cost of alternative energy sources and tough environmental standards are among the key hurdles to Asian efforts to diversify away from dependence on imported oil, industry experts say.
As oil prices soared to record levels, coal, nuclear energy, wind, geothermal and hydro-electric power have increased their attractiveness as alternatives for the region to meet its energy needs.
But industry experts said that new technologies used to produce alternative fuel while meeting environmental standards on pollution must lead to affordable electricity for them to be widely accepted commercially.
'The challenge for us suppliers is to continue to drive down the costs of electricity,' said Magued Eldaief, president and Asia executive for US-based GE Energy.
'We fully understand that to drive renewable technology, we have to be able to compete with today's conventional technologies.
'The reality is that commercial acceptance of new technologies only occur once these technologies achieve a cost of electricity of around five US cents per kilowatt-hour.'
Speaking at an international conference on power generation, Eldaief said meeting global environmental standards was another challenge but this could be solved with the use of technology.
Eddie Widiono, head of the state-run Indonesia Electricity Corp, said efforts to increase the use of coal and natural gas in his country were being hampered by funding problems.
Despite various initiatives, Widiono said not enough was being done to secure the energy needs of Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest oil producer but which is now a net oil importer.
'Being a country with many potential primary energy sources, I must say that potentially we should be better off than other countries but technically there are still a lot of hindrances for us to overcome,' he said.
Christine Copley, senior manager of the Britain-based World Coal Institute, said the polluting effects of coal-fired plants on the environment are being addressed through technology and innovation.
'The message ... is that coal use need not be incompatible with environmental protection,' a report by the institute circulated at the conference said.