CONERGY AG, Germany's leading solar energy company, wants more than half of its sales generated from outside its home turf by 2008, banking on strong regional demand from countries like China and India.

This would be up from 42 percent in 2006, Matthew Thornington, regional head for Asia Pacific, said yesterday.

"Key markets for us as of today are India, China and (South) Korea, as well as other Southeastern Asian countries and Australia," Thornington said.

Listed in Frankfurt, Conergy had turnover of 752.2 million euros (US$1.02 billion) in 2006, and this is expected to exceed 1.25 billion euros this year, Thornington said.

Conergy opened a subsidiary in Shanghai yesterday to address the expanding local demand.

Driven by a rapidly growing global energy demand and tightening fossil fuel supply, Thornington said the worldwide market for renewable energy could be as large as US$300 billion by 2015.

Most primary energy consumption in China comes from coal-burning and the fuel, which is not clean while being burned, will maintain a key role in China over some decades, experts and government officials have said.

Still, China has promised to raise the portion of energy generated from renewable sources in coming years. The government is mapping out detailed pricing schemes on such renewable energies, which cost far more than conventional ways of generating the same amount of electricity.

Governments in some developed nations subsidize power generation from such renewables.

Conergy also aims to generate more than half of its turnover from non-solar renewables by the end of 2008 as it looks to expand into other sectors such as wind power and bio-energy.