Wind - March 26, 2020
Global wind capacity increased by 60.4 GW last year, study finds
The Global Wind Energy Council released their 2019 Global Wind Report, which found that 60.4 GW of wind energy capacity was installed globally last year, a 19% increase from installations in 2018.
In 2019, the global wind capacity was brought to over 651 GW, an increase of 10% since 2018. Of that, offshore wind accounted for a full 10% of new installations with 6.1 GW of added capacity.
China and the U.S. had the largest onshore wind markets, accounting for more than 60% of global capacity.
“The wind energy industry is growing thanks to new innovations in business models and technology,” GWEC Strategy Director Feng Zhao said in a statement. “In 2019, we continued to see more and more countries transitioning away from Feed-in-Tariffs to market-based mechanisms, as well as continued growth in the corporate PPA market. Additionally, new technology developments such as hybridisation and green hydrogen are increasingly being implemented in both mature and emerging markets to increase the share of wind and other renewables in their energy systems. If policymakers and industry stakeholders embrace these new opportunities, we can accelerate the global energy transition to never-before-seen levels.”
GWEC identified that shifting to building energy markets that support the long-term sustainability of the wind and renewable industries and using emerging technological solutions such as hybridization and green hydrogen to open new opportunities for the sector will be key to further accelerating wind growth. While 2020 was forecasted to boast 76 GW of new wind capacity, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on wind energy installations is not certain yet. Initial forecasting projected that wind energy capacity would increase by 355 GW over the next five years.
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