On 31 October 2019, energy industry leaders gathered in Singapore for the Wind Energy Conference at the Asia Clean Energy Summit (ACES). The conference, co-organised by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS), featured dialogues on regulatory challenges, project financing and the latest technological advancements in the wind sector.
The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has launched a Policy Pulse report on Vietnam, which provides qualitative analysis of the political and macroeconomic headwinds steering the wind sector and the measures needed to unlock greater wind power potential.
Vietnam has one of the fastest-growing energy consumption rates in South East Asia, with a growing population of 96.7 million people and steady economic growth. But its development roadmap, outlined by the National Power Development Plan 7, is currently dependent on coal power. Coal is primed to supply more than half of the country’s power by 2030, leaving Vietnam vulnerable to commercial volatility, climatic risks and political headwinds from trading and development partners.
In 2018,11 manufacturers installed 735 units of offshore wind turbines globally, totaling 3,693 MW of capacity. – six out of the top ten suppliers are from China. Those companies are Shanghai Electric, Envision, Goldwind, Mingyang, United Power and XEMC. While China is certainly dominating in terms of supplying offshore turbines, they are still playing catch-up in terms offshore turbine technology.
Around the world, there is a palpable sense of urgency to accelerate the energy transition. With millions of citizens participating in the #FridaysForFuture movement and still more facing intensifying natural hazards like typhoons, droughts and hurricanes, climate change has become an indisputable condition of our modern world.
Wind and renewable energy have achieved strong progress in cost reduction and deployment so far, however their adoption has not been fast enough to slow the rate of carbon emissions.
Let’s explore the factors that are holding back South East Asia’s wind energy potential, and why we must urgently do everything we can to remove these obstacles for the future of the region.
There is no better time than now for our industry to step up the energy transition and to define our role in the future energy system: the cost reduction of wind energy, the improvement of the efficiencies and reliability of wind technologies and the mounting threat of the climate imperatives are making the case for wind energy.
The world is waking up to the realisation that we now have only a short time to take action to head off a disastrous rise in global temperatures and to preserve a liveable planet. And in order achieve this, that a wholesale energy transition needs to be carried out on an urgent basis. “We have 10 years” to get things right and on the correct pathway of decarbonisation and deployment of renewable energy, GWEC’s Chairman Morten Dyrholm pointed out to a recent Ministerial Conference on Renewable Energy Integration in Berlin.
The African continent is set for growth, the population is expected to grow by 1.4% each year until 2030. GDP is expected to grow by 4%. This development is demanding huge investments in infrastructure including the energy markets to keep up with the growth, access to electricity being one of the main challenges African citizens consider to encompass and unlock their growth path. African governments have acknowledged that growth can only be supported through sustainable solutions, which means an obvious opportunity for wind energy. Offering a cost-competitive solution, wind energy has the potential to drive not only the electrification level in Africa (currently only 43% of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa have access to electricity according to the World Energy Outlook 2018 from IEA), but to also support the economic growth and development of African markets.
Offshore wind is now contributing more and more to the growth of the wind industry as a whole. Asia is set to become a leader in offshore wind, with 100 GW of offshore capacity to be installed until 2030.
Looking beyond 2030, GWEC expects that offshore wind will play a significant role in the energy transition. As more and more markets enter the offshore industry and innovative technology such as floating solutions became mainstreamed, offshore wind will only continue to become more and more cost-competitive. With its large scale, offshore wind has the real opportunity to replace traditional energy sources, contributing to a global green economy.
© GWEC – Global Wind Energy Council | Disclaimer | Privacy Policy
