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The sun is an enormous power plant. Every day it supplies us with eighty times more energy than is needed in .

Hydropower has been used since the inception of electricity generation at the end of the 19th century as, for example, a form of propulsion in mills and sawmills. For a long time it was the only significant regenerative energy source for power generation. Nowadays, hydropower is a fully-developed technology and the most used source of renewable energy in the world after traditional biomass. According to figures from various sources, about 16 to 19 percent of the world?s entire net power consumption comes from this energy source. In Germany, hydropower was the most important regenerative energy source for a long time, but more power has been generated from wind than hydropower since 2004.

Since the first wind turbines were built at the beginning of the 90s, power generation from wind energy has seen dynamic growth thanks to state-supported programmes. With more than a third of the world's installed capacity, no other country has more wind turbines than Germany. According to figures from the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), 18,685 plants with a capacity of 20,622 megawatts were in operation at the end of 2006. They generated 30.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2006. This corresponds to a share of around five percent in Germany's total electricity consumption and provides the largest contribution to power generation from renewable energy sources (sources: AGEE-Stat, industry figures; as of April 2007).

Biomass is mankind's oldest source of energy. For millennia, mankind has been using biomass as a fuel. For a long time, biomass in the form of wood was the most important material used for heating and cooking purposes, until superseded by coal, crude oil and natural gas. Throughout the world, biomass is the most important renewable fuel. Even today, on average, 7 per cent of Asia's primary energy consumption is supplied by biomass - in Latin America the figure is 10 per cent and in Africa it is estimated to amount to 40 per cent - which in parts can lead to disastrous consequences for the forests and soils of the countries affected. Despite the fact that wood and charcoal can be principally categorised as renewable fuel sources, even very extensive re-forestation measures cannot compensate for unusually excessive exploitation.  Such serious problems are what confront the various advantages of bioenergy vis-à-vis other regenerative energy sources: energy from biomass can be stored and used as required, and it has a high degree of efficiency. Its combustion releases exactly the same amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) as the plants fixed by photosynthesis while growing. Due to the closed CO2 cycle, biomass is a climate-friendly fuel that causes no additional greenhouse gases.

Geothermal energy is the energy stored in the form of heat underneath the solid surface of the Earth. Enormous temperatures of up to 6,000 degrees Celsius reign in the Earth's interior, visible in volcanoes, hot springs and geysers. This warmth heats up layers of rock and soil as well as underground water reservoirs and can be used for providing heat, cooling, for generating electricity and for desalinating seawater. The constant warming of the Earth's surface by the sun can be used for heating purposes by means of heat pumps. Geothermal heat is particularly interesting when it comes to generating electricity as it is available at all times, irrespective of the season, weather or climatic conditions. Geothermal heat is one of the world?s richest sources of renewable energy.