Earlier today, the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) held a webinar alongside the release of their annual Global Wind Report, both are linked below:
The speakers noted that 2020 was a record year for global wind projects, with 93 GW of wind power installed, despite the impact of COVID-19. Even so, we are falling short of where we need to be. The report highlights that we need to be installing around 180 GW per year to achieve the Paris targets.
Below is a video put together by GWEC summarising the report. For more information, here are 5 key takeaways based on the trends last year:
Global wind power growth must triple over next decade to achieve net zero
5 key takeaways:
- 2020 was a record year for wind energy, with 93 GW of wind power installed with a 53% year-on-year increase. 86.9 GW onshore wind installations and 6.1 GW offshore installations.
- China and the US collectively installed 74% of the new wind power installations onshore. More than half of the new installations were in China and nearly one fifth in the US.
- China installed half of the new offshore wind in 2020, followed by steady growth in Europe including the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and Germany. Portugal also commissioned two new floating wind turbines. The UK is the top market for offshore wind. GWEC expects the volume of new offshore installations to quadruple by 2025.
- This is the ‘make-or-break’ decade. We must increase wind growth from approximately 90 GW per year to 180 GW per year in order to meet Paris targets.
- Wind energy alone will not get us to net zero – collaboration is key to electrify everything possible. For hard-to-abate sectors (heavy industry, aviation, chemicals), there are higher barriers for full electrification. For these sectors, breakthrough scalable solutions and energy carrier technologies are needed as well as flexible and modern grids to enable higher rates of renewables penetration as well as greater responsiveness to power supply and demand.
The scaling up of wind projects is of particular relevance to Enertechnos as a push for more wind power means a greater demand for cable. To put things into perspective, Nexans recently announced each new gigawatt of offshore wind power requires up to €250 million in terms of the inter-array cables and export cables.
The scaling up of wind projects is of particular relevance to Enertechnos as a push for more wind power means a greater demand for cable. To put things into perspective, Nexans recently announced each new gigawatt of offshore wind power requires up to €250 million in terms of the inter-array cables and export cables.