Global wind market sets records for new installations and orders in 2020
Energize Weekly, April 14, 2021
Wind turbine orders and installations soared to new records in 2020, despite the pandemic, according to new market reports from BloombergNEF and Wood Mackenzie.
Orders for wind turbine capacity reached nearly 100 gigawatts (GW), a 59 percent year-on-year increase and a new record, according to BloombergNEF.
At the same time, 114 GW of new wind capacity came online in 2020, an 82 percent year-on-year jump. “This is the highest global annual installation total on record,” energy consultant Wood Mackenzie said.
Wood Mackenzie is also forecasting a robust market for the rest of the decade.
“The global wind power industry will add nearly 1 terawatt of new capacity from 2021 to 2030, underscoring the important role wind technologies will play in the energy transition,” Luke Lewandowski, Wood Mackenzie research director, said in a statement.
Almost all the new orders for turbines in 2020 were for land-based projects, as offshore turbine orders dropped to 6.5 GW, a 13 percent decline compared to 2019, according to Bloomberg’s 2020 Global Wind Turbine Market Shares report.
The top turbine suppliers for new orders in 2020 were GE and Goldwind, with Vestas, which had been in first place for the last four years, falling to third.
“GE and Goldwind claimed the top two spots in this year’s ranking by concentrating on the largest markets,” Isabelle Edwards, wind associate at BloombergNEF and author of the market report, said in a statement. “Vestas takes on less market risk, with turbines commissioned in 34 countries last year.”
The strategy adopted by GE and Goldwind “may not be as fruitful” in 2021 as subsidies in some of the large markets lapse, Edwards said.
GE saw most of its growth in the U.S., which accounted for 70 percent of its 13.5 GW total orders – double its 2019 number.
China, however, remained the largest market accounting for 57.8 GW – more than half the global total.
“Nearly every turbine maker is now selling turbines into China, and in 2020 it was the second-largest market for both GE and Vestas,” Edwards said.
New U.S. orders hit 16.5 GW of wind capacity, a 77 percent increase from 2019 and a single-year record, as developers moved to get projects in the pipeline before the federal production tax credit (PTC) is phased out.
The 2020 total eclipsed the previous record set in 2012 by 2.6 GW.
Siemens Gamesa held on to its position as the leader in the offshore wind market, with 1.91 GW of commissions, including 752 megawatts (MW) at the Borssele wind farm in the Netherlands, and 539 MW at the East Anglia One project in the U.K.
China also led in new installation in 2020 with 72 GW of installed capacity – which by itself would have set a record for global installed capacity for a single year, according to Wood Mackenzie.
China’s 2030 target of 1,200 GW of wind and solar will lead to 408 GW of new wind capacity between 2021 and 2030 – 41 percent of the global total, Wood Mackenzie said.
“Offshore capacity in the country will grow by 73 GW during this period, an 800 percent increase in installed capacity in this sector,” Lewandowski said.
The rest of Asia Pacific is projected by Wood Mackenzie to add 126 GW over the decade, led by India.
Another key region spurring wind power growth through 2030 will be Europe, where the European Union’s decarbonization plan will create an estimated 248 GW of new wind capacity.
A last-minute extension of the PTC in the U.S. has bolstered the forecast for 35 GW of new capacity between 2021 and 2023. For the rest of the decade offshore projects will play a big role, averaging 4.5 GW a year, making up 40 percent of annual capacity.
In Wood Mackenzie’s forecast, Latin America will see a record 16 GW of new wind installations, with 90 percent of the capacity in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia.
