China

Goldwind: 'Rejecting our turbines will be costly for the West'

Chinese wind turbine makers enjoy ‘huge’ cost advantage over Western rivals, says vice president of world’s biggest supplier

Goldwind is the world's leading wind turbine supplier by sheer capacity, although its sales are overwhelmingly in the vast Chinese market.
Goldwind is the world's leading wind turbine supplier by sheer capacity, although its sales are overwhelmingly in the vast Chinese market.Photo: Goldwind
Journalist

Goldwind has warned that shunning Chinese wind turbines will come at a cost to the West, as debate heats up about a factory that rival manufacturer Mingyang wants to open in Scotland.

Goldwind vice-president Kai Wu told the Financial Times that it was “fully understandable” that countries want to boost local supply chains and create employment opportunities.

Chinese wind giants enjoy a huge cost advantage over Western rivals such as Denmark’s Vestas and Germany’s Nordex due to the economies of scale they enjoy in their home country.

But even though their home market is vast, domestic competition between the dozen or so major Chinese wind turbine suppliers has variously been described as “brutal”, “vicious” and “horrible”, spurring OEMs to look to international markets.

Wu said that the cost advantage Chinese suppliers have over Western rivals has grown “huge” to around 40%, “at least”. Those costs ultimately get passed onto consumers, whether households or companies, at a time when high energy prices are top of the agenda in many Western countries.

“I always ask them: are you ready to sacrifice the cost of energy?” Wu, the head of Goldwind’s international division, told the FT. “Everybody wants to have the best salary and the lowest workload, but it’s not reality.”

Wu said that wind projects in the West take longer to develop and are more expensive. He continued that some Western engineering graduates want salaries of $140,000 – and that he could hire “at least three” for that money in China.

Goldwind is the world’s largest wind turbine supplier by sheer capacity, although almost all of its sales are domestic. The company last year opened its first international factory in Brazil, bought off Western rival GE Vernova.
The expansion of Chinese wind giants into new markets, ever topical, has been even more in the spotlight this week following the news that Mingyang plans to open what it claims would be the UK’s largest wind turbine factory in Scotland.
There is fierce pushback from some – although by no means all – in the European wind industry over the prospect of Chinese wind giants selling their turbines on the continent, let alone setting up shop there.

Concerns include allegations that China’s wind giants enjoy unfair domestic subsidies – currently subject to an EU probe – and would threaten the existence of homegrown suppliers and local jobs in Europe. There are also claims China deliberately fosters over production of turbines, and that these turbines could represent a security threat.

China’s wind giants have fiercly denied they enjoy any unfair advantage from subsidies or that their turbines pose a security threat, while also committing to localise production in Europe and other international markets to protect jobs.

(Copyright)

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Published 17 October 2025, 08:24Updated 17 October 2025, 08:24
ChinaEuropeAsia-PacificGoldwind