From its first 102 MW Donghai Bridge Wind Farm near Shanghai commissioned in 2010, China has since been busy building swathes of turbines at sea with nearly 7 GW of capacity already installed as of December 2019. While China is considered a late bloomer in the offshore wind industry, it is expected to surpass offshore wind pioneers like Germany and the UK in terms of cumulative installations by as early as this year.
The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), joined by Greenpeace and REN21, has announced the winner of the first edition of the “REvolutionaries: The Steve Sawyer Memorial Award,” launched in 2020 to honour the life’s work of late GWEC CEO Steve Sawyer, a pioneer of the global energy transition.
The Global Wind Energy Council has released its quarterly update on the global wind auctions database, which shows that a total of 2.17 GW of wind power capacity was auctioned globally, of which 1.77 GW was in Europe and 0.4 GW in Asia-Pacific.
Europe is considered the cradle for modern wind turbine technologies, which explains why European OEMs such as Vestas and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy are today’s global leaders in wind turbine manufacturing and turbine technology innovation. Although most Asian suppliers have historically relied on turbine technologies licensed from Europe to enter the wind industry, Asia Pacific has now become the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturing hub after a decade of development. In 2019, GWEC saw eight Asian turbine suppliers making the cut in the world’s top fifteen supplier ranking, as per GWEC Market Intelligence’s latest report ‘Supply Side Data 2019’.
Global Wind Organisation is the industry body responsible for safety training standards for over 90,000 of the world’s wind energy workers has revealed its network is emerging from Covid-19 lockdown. There are over 350 GWO Certified Training Centres in 43 countries around the world and up to 83% told a recent survey that they will have reopened their doors by the end of May.
In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, many voices are calling for society to accelerate investment in green energy to help economies recover. GWEC CEO Ben Backwell highlights five key actions that governments must take to power a sustainable recovery and how the wind industry can help.
By the end of 2019, the top 15 wind farm owner-operators held over one-third of the total 650 GW of onshore and offshore assets globally. The newly merged China Energy (formerly Guodian Group and Shenhua Group) is by far the largest asset owner, with more than double the capacity under their ownership compared to the second place China Huaneng. The non-Chinese top asset owner are active globally – Iberdrola, EDPR, Enel Green Power, RWE, Acciona, EDF, NextEra and Berkshire Hathaway Energy.
India is the world’s fourth-largest onshore wind market by installations, with 37.5 GW of capacity as of 2019. Technical potential at 120-metre hub height is a whopping 695 GW, according the National Institute of Wind Energy, and the government has set a wind capacity target of 60 GW by 2022 and 140 GW by 2030. Wind is already the second most competitive energy source on India’s grid.
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