China accounted for half of past year’s offshore wind installations
Offshore wind turbines currently being installed in waters off Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, China, on September 3, 2020.
Yao Feng | Visible China Group | Getty Images
The planet extra much more than 6 gigawatts (GW) of new offshore wind capability in 2020, with China dependable for over 50 percent of installations in the sector, according to new figures revealed Thursday.
The details, from the Global Wind Electricity Council’s current market intelligence device, exhibits China set up 3.06 GW last 12 months. Its closest rival, the Netherlands, set up a tiny under 1.5 GW of capability. The U.S. put in just 12 megawatts of offshore capacity last year. For three a long time in a row now, China has been the variety just one country for offshore wind installations.
In spite of the coronavirus pandemic, the GWEC, an intercontinental trade association for the sector, stated offshore wind was nonetheless capable to take pleasure in its next best yr for installations.
The U.K. stays the selection 1 industry for cumulative installations, with above 10.2 GW of potential, carefully adopted by China, which now has just underneath 10 GW.
All in all, international offshore wind ability stands at additional than 35 GW, the GWEC states. Ability refers to the most amount of money of strength that installations can create, not what they’re always creating.
“While China was hit initial by the COVID-19 crisis, the impacts on the offshore wind sector had been negligible, resuming ‘business-as-usual’ as early as March 2020,” Feng Zhao, who is head of current market intelligence and approach at the GWEC, claimed in a statement.
He went on to make clear that whilst Europe remained the world’s premier offshore wind market, the Asia-Pacific area would “enjoy an progressively vital position driving field growth,” noting that the two Japan and South Korea experienced not too long ago laid out “formidable offshore wind targets.”
“The U.S. will also become an more and more significant industry for offshore wind, as the new administration has manufactured it distinct they are working to speed up expansion of this essential sector,” he stated.
In an handle to the United Nations final September, President Xi Jinping claimed China was concentrating on peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by the calendar year 2060.
Xi’s announcement produced a good offer of curiosity at the time, not minimum due to the fact China is an industrial powerhouse and the planet’s major emitter of carbon dioxide.
