Goldwind leads as China's turbine giants dominate record wind growth

Chinese wind turbine makers dominated a record global total for new installations last year but remain overwhelmingly dependent on their vast home market, said the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).

Vestas is the highest-ranked western OEM at third place in the GWEC league table, down from first last time – but remains the most geographically diverse of all with turbines installed in 36 nations last year.

Chinese groups installed 81.6GW of the record-breaking 120.7GW of turbine capacity added globally last year, says the report, which also underlines the home-grown nature of that dominance.

Domestic installations accounted for 97% of the Chinese OEMs’ additions in 2023, a level unchanged on 2022. GWEC said the Chinese installed 2.3GW outside China last year. Almost two thirds of that was in Asia and just 8MW inside the EU.

And while Chinese efforts to build share in Europe have little to show so far, the same is true on the other side of the coin.

Feng Zhao, Head of Strategy and Market Intelligence, GWEC, said: “Although the fierce price competition in China has been driving Chinese turbine OEMS to pursue opportunities in the overseas markets since 2021, 97% of their installations in 2023 are still in their home market.

“Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex Group, GE Vernova and Enercon remain the top five turbine suppliers in Europe, in 2023. Chinese OEMs only installed 194.1MW of wind turbines in Europe last year, of which only 8.4MW was in the EU27."

Zhao added: “Of the top three western OEMs, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa reported 155MW and 3MW installations in China in 2023, respectively, together accounting for only 0.2% of the new installations in the world’s largest wind market.”

GWEC CEO Ben Backwell said: “The data in this report paints a picture of a global industry that has entered a period of accelerated growth.

"However, that growth is concentrated in mature markets like China, the US and Germany. For wind energy to play its full role in the push to achieve Net Zero, growth needs to speed up across the globe, particularly in emerging and developing economies."