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According to a report by BNEF (BloombergNEF), the wind industry achieved another feat with newly installed capacity touching almost 100 gigawatts globally for the second year in a row.
Developers worldwide installed wind turbines with a total capacity of 99.2 gigawatts in 2021, surpassing the installation record of 98.5 gigawatts in the previous year. Although the maximum installation of turbines was on land (83%), the commissioning of offshore turbines also progressed at a rate of 16.8 gigawatts, registering a surge of 161 percent from 2020, according to BNEF’s 2021 Global Wind Turbine Market Shares report.
By adding 15.2 gigawatts, Vestas is still maintaining its top spot in the market of wind power globally. Vestas is leading with a substantial margin of 3.2 gigawatts with its closest competitor Goldwind, which is in second place by adding 12 gigawatts. The third spot goes to Siemens Gamesa. Previous year’s foremost turbine manufacturer, General Electric, slipped to the fifth position as commissions in the United States, in its home market, declined by 22 percent. These figures are purely drawn based on BNEF’s global database of wind projects and in-depth information from the industry.
As per Isabelle Edwards, senior analyst at BloombergNEF and lead author of the report, “A new era of wind build is truly underway – a second near-100-gigawatt year represents a new status-quo for the industry,”. She asserts, “As governments worldwide set net-zero ambitions targeting wind build several multiples higher than today, the wind industry has proved it can deliver sustained growth.”
Besides global supply-chain mayhem and evident commodity inflation, China installed 55.8GW of wind power last year, states BNEF. China’s annual commission fell just two gigawatts short of the previous high established in 2020. Offshore wind turbines of 14.2 gigawatts were commissioned by the developers in China to mark the planned closing of offshore wind feed-in tariff- confirming a threefold rise (251%) year over year.
With 13 gigawatts expected to be added, the United States is still the second-largest market for new wind projects in 2021. The US and China together contributed to two-thirds of new worldwide wind power last year. For the first time, Vietnam entered the top three worldwide wind markets, with 3.6 gigawatts of onshore and near-shore wind farms coming online.
