This paper mainly focuses on the two issues through remote sensing: assessment of the renewable energy potential and integration of the renewable energy model. Three methods for assessing the renewable energy potential with remote sensing (RS) are proposed. The methods can provide more precise evaluation of renewable energy potential, which is the first vital step to develop renewable energy model. The paper then first presents three integrations of the renewable energy model with RS and points out that with respect to the problems one of them is employed. The assessment methods based on RS and the integrations with RS are illustrated by a simple example with Europe solar energy data set. The results show that Germany is the optimal country to install photovoltaic with a capacity of 137 125 GW. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.