Energy News Monitoring

The 15th edition of the Global Wind Report 2019 released by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) provides comprehensive datasets on wind industry around the world, based on the newest market data, country profiles and global trends.

According to the report, 2019 became the second-best year for wind power historically, with 60.4 GW of wind energy installations globally. This is 19% more than in 2018, when 51.3 GW of new wind energy was installed. The total capacity of the wind energy around the world has increased to 651 GW (10% more compared to the previous year).

China and the USA stay on top of the onshore wind market in the world, together making up more than 60% of new capacity in 2019, followed by the United Kingdom, India and Spain. If we look at cumulative installations in general, 5 countries account for about 73% of the global 651 GW – China, the USA, Germany, India and Spain. At a regional level, the Asia Pacific region was the global leader for onshore wind in 2019 installing 28.1GW, more than half of the total new global capacity. The onshore wind market in Europe grew by 30%, mainly driven by Spain, Sweden and Greece. Europe’s leader in total wind capacity, Germany, has not had its best year, with its installations declined by more than half compared to 2018. Developing markets for wind in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and South East Asia have generally experienced modest growth in 2019, with combined installations of 4.5 GW. Although Argentina and Chile have shown positive dynamics of growth by more than doubling their installations if compared to 2018, the overall installations in Latin America dropped due to a 1.2 GW sharp fall in the largest market of the region - Brazil.

According to figures, provided in the report, 10% of new installations were offshore (6.1 GW), which set a record indicating an increasing role of offshore wind in driving global wind installations. At a regional level, Europe is still the largest offshore wind market, accounting for about 60% of new installations in 2019. At a country level, China remains the main leader in new installations for offshore wind, adding about 2.4 GW capacity in 2019, while the UK and Germany occupy second and third position with 1.8 GW and 1.1 GW, respectively.

The GWEC’s wind energy market forecasts remain positive. For the next five years, about 71 GW of new installations are expected annually. The GWEC experts note that although 2020 was forecasted early on to be the best year for the market (76 GW of new capacity), the situation will be impacted by COVID-19 restrictions and the GWEC will have to make adjustments to its projection.