Offshore wind's 'new wave' of markets poised to fuel end-of-decade boom: GWEC
Global body says likes of Brazil, Australia and South Korea to fuel growth but cuts floating forecast
A ‘new wave’ of offshore wind markets is set to turbocharge offshore wind growth around the end of the decade – providing governments and the industry itself can get their act together, said the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).
Annual installations will triple by 2028 and go on to hit 60GW by 2032, the report expects.
That growth – which would keep offshore wind on track to hit a global goal of installing 380GW by 2030 – will be driven by a list of new markets seeing significant installations beyond current pacesetters such as China, the UK and Germany.
New players include Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brazil, Colombia, Ireland and Poland, said GWEC, “where policy developments and unprecedented focus across governments, industry and civil society is setting the conditions for long-term offshore wind development at scale”.
The forecast is as usual conditional on policymakers and the industry itself implementing key growth conditions covering areas such as financing, grids, skills, supply chain collaboration and removal of regulatory barriers such as slow permitting.
The disruption caused by factors such as inflation and squeezed supply chains led GWEC to cut its global five-year installation forecast by 10%. Like others, GWEC dampened expectations for floating wind power, where it said commercialisation “is unlikely to be achieved until the end of this decade”. The body cut its previous prediction by 22% to 8.5GW in place by 2030.
The forecasts come as GWEC said the world added 10.8GW of new capacity in 2023, the second-highest annual total so far despite the market turbulence, taking the current global total to 75.2GW.
“This new wave of offshore wind markets are taking notice and making progress of their own, in some cases outgrowing the ‘emerging’ label thanks to strong collaboration between industry and policymakers. It is vital to continue that cooperation, particularly in this year of significant elections around the world, to ensure targets become turbines and more markets develop in the wake of this decade’s expansion.”
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