The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) reported that the offshore wind industry achieved a record of 6.1 GW installations of new capacity in 2019, bringing the overall capacity to 29 GW.
Specifically, eight markets that reported new offshore wind installations in the year that passed are:
- China – 2395 MW
- United Kingdom – 1764 MW
- Germany – 1111 MW
- Denmark – 374 MW
- Belgium – 370 MW
- Taiwan – 120 MW
- Portugal – 8 MW (floating)
- Japan – 3 MW (floating)
It is stated that Europe remained the largest market for offshore wind, holding a 59% stake of new installation, followed by Asia-Pacific region which accounted for the remaining 41%.
China leads the new installations in the sector, adding more than 2.3 GW capacity in 2019, with the UK and Germany in second and third place, installing 1.8 GW and 1.1 GW respectively.
Moreover, the Council highlighted that the offshore wind accounted for approximately 10% of new wind power installations in 2019, an increase from 5% in 2015.
GWEC expects over 50GW of new offshore wind capacity to be installed from 2020-2024, as projects in emerging markets with ambitious targets for offshore wind such as the US, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam and South Korea are realised.
Ben Backwell, CEO at GWEC commented that
In 2019, we continued to see the strong growth trend of offshore wind, which now makes up 10 per cent of total wind energy installations … Offshore wind is a huge opportunity to meet our climate targets, as it can replace expensive imported fuels, provide clean energy solutions to countries that have limited for land availability, and supply increasingly competitive zero-carbon energy at a massive scale.