The world installed 116 GW of wind power in 2023. China installed the 65% | REVE News of the wind sector in Spain and in the world

As every year, the GWEC (Global Wind Energy Council) has released its annual Global Wind Report, which provides an overview of the state of the wind energy sector worldwide, including statistics, challenges, and future prospects.

The report focuses on providing solutions and tools to achieve the goal of tripling renewable energy installations by 2030. Wind energy is, of course, crucial to this objective.

It is a comprehensive report with a lot of information covering topics such as investment and financing, supply chain, grids, social impact… and, of course, statistics.

It is really worth taking a look at it because it provides numerous real-life examples and links to many sources for further information.

So, just like we did in edition #72 with the wind power numbers in Europe, let’s dissect and highlight some key points from the GWEC report, specifically from the statistics section.

Windletter #72 - Exploring the numbers of wind energy in Europe

The world installed 116.6 GW of new wind power capacity in 2023, a 50% increase compared to 2022, which is no small feat.

According to data from the GWEC, the world had 1,021 GW of installed wind power capacity as of the end of 2023. From 2022 to 2023, there was a 13% growth. Kiko Maza’s insights on the journey to reach 1,000 GW are quite interesting.

Onshore wind surpassed 105 GW in installations (the best year in history), while offshore wind approached 11 GW (the second best year in history after 2021). There’s a stark difference, even though offshore is the trending technology and attracts most of the attention.

Thanks to the strong rebound in new installations in China and India, the Asia-Pacific region consolidated its position as the largest wind power market worldwide with a 71% market share.

Europe was the second region with the most installations, thanks to its 18.3 GW, which drops to 16.2 GW if we only consider the EU. North America closes the podium with 7% of global installations.

The top 5 countries in terms of installations are China, the United States, Brazil, Germany, and India. These 5 countries account for 82% of global installations.

The end of feed-in tariffs. For years, feed-in tariffs were responsible for showcasing wind projects with very low risk. States guaranteed a tariff per MWh that allowed projects to move forward. However, the arrival of auctions made them disappear from the map, as seen in the following graph.

The case of China is peculiar, as it still has a kind of feed-in tariff: wind farms receive the same tariff as coal-fired power plants, known as grid parity.

In 2023, 39.4 GW of offshore wind were awarded worldwide. Excluding China, where 18.2 GW were awarded with the grid-parity system, the remaining 21.2 GW were awarded in Europe (15.5 GW), the United States (4 GW), and Japan (1.4 GW).

For this year 2024, GWEC expects new installations to surpass the previous record with 130 GW installed. The number of installed GW would increase to reach 182 GW by 2028.