Stable 117 gigawatts, no market growth: China and the 17 other leading wind power markets
The World Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has confirmed the wind energy trend of stagnation in annual capacity additions, previously predicted by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Like IRENA four weeks earlier, GWEC also compiled a result at the previous year's level after querying and reviewing the now likely completed financial statements of national and continental wind energy associations. In 2024, new wind farm capacities with a total generation capacity of 17 gigawatts (GW) began operation worldwide, compared to 16.6 GW in the previous year. The market growth of 400 megawatts (MW) represents an increase of 2.5 percent.
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That's not nothing, and it's somewhat better than the 1.5 GW decline in the global market reported by Irena in March. Irena statisticians deduct the nominal capacity already reduced due to the replacement of old with new, more powerful wind turbines from the annual new installations, while GWEC counts the entire gross new installations. And anyway, the global wind energy market grows in spurts, with repeatedly alternating phases of sharp growth and stagnation or even slight decline. Phases with two or four consecutive years of more or less constant new installation volumes have so far been repeatedly followed by single or two-year growth spurts of up to or even more than 50 percent. Market movements often result from corresponding growth spurts in China, the lagging leader in wind power, which this time recorded 4.5 GW more new wind power installations than in 2023, thus almost reaching the 80 GW mark for annual new installations with 79,824 MW to be exact. This corresponded to almost 70 percent of the net new wind farm nominal capacity connected to the electricity grids worldwide.
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The fact that China's strong increase in the construction of new feed-in-ready electrical capacity for converting wind into green, climate-friendly electricity is not sufficient to generate at least the same level of growth in new global installations speaks against the global wind power market in 2024. Indeed, some of the world's largest wind power countries have slowed down in the past year or at least failed to achieve the expected upswing. However, several countries are now showing stable developments below a level that statistically already impacts the entire global market.
"2024 marked another record year for wind energy, with 177 GW of new installations worldwide," said GWEC Managing Director Ben Backwell, commenting on the global market results. "Apart from last year's marginal market increase, this market report tells the story of an industry increasingly expanding into new geographies... driven by the growing demand for a secure supply of clean energy in an increasingly volatile world."
The GWEC statistics do indeed contain several exciting ups and downs in individual national markets, although these are currently canceling each other out. For example, the American states in North, Central, and South America lost a combined and rounded 4.2 GW of market volume compared to the previous year. Following 14.4 GW in 2023, the figure was 10.2 GW last year. In Europe, too, 16.5 GW of newly added wind power capacity was added to the grid, a significant 1.8 GW less than in 2023. In Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Ocean states, on the other hand, gross capacity added in 2024 was 88.3 GW, up 5.4 GW from the previous year. This still exceeds Chinese growth by 1.2 GW and, considering the previously small share of non-Chinese Asian countries in rotor installation, represents a 30 percent increase. In Africa and the Middle East, where wind power has so far played a negligible role, there was also a 1 GW increase, doubling the capacity installed across the continent to around 2 GW compared to the previous year.
Some of the leading markets did take a breather compared to the previous year. The USA, the second most important market, saw new construction completed onshore and offshore by well under 4.1 GW, fall by a good 20 percent. This is said to be due in no small part to postponed decisions on the reissue of tax breaks and, of all things, is likely a result of the previous administration's greater focus on the Inflation Reduction Act to attract renewable energy companies to the USA. This is the analysis of the US renewable energy association ACP. Another important factor was the delayed processing of grid connection requests for new wind farms. In Germany, new construction remained almost flat at 4 GW, with only 0.1 GW more new connected capacity, because the onshore wind market only generated 3.3 GW, around 0.2 GW less than in 2023 and about 0.7 GW less than expected. Missing grid components were a problem here, but also the delayed provision of sockets at sea, as the grid operators' substations for transmitting electricity to land are called, in offshore wind farms.
On the other hand, markets are also stabilizing or steadily catching up. In Brazil and India, volumes remained well above the three-gigawatt mark at 3.3 and 3.4 GW, respectively. In the UK with just under 2 GW, France with 1.7 GW, Finland with 1.4 GW, Canada with just under 1.4 GW, Turkey with 1.3 GW, Taiwan with 1.2 GW, and Spain with just under 1.2 GW, other countries are experiencing stabilizing trends in the over one- to two-gigawatt range. The GWEC data also demonstrates that there are now markets in all regions of the world with volumes likely to increase in the coming years. These include Poland and Italy with 805 and just under 690 MW, respectively. Northwestern Slavs will primarily expand offshore in the future, and Italy is building on an increasingly reliable tendering practice with the newly introduced award volumes and award rules of the Fer-X and Fer-2 laws. According to GWEC, Australia saw only 835 MW of new wind power installed, compared to the 2.4 GW projected by Irena a month earlier. However, GWEC notes that wind farms with a total capacity of 3.3 GW are currently under construction, and that financing commitments from investors and developers for 2.2 GW of new wind power were received in 2024 alone. This means that Down Under is likely to soon return to its previous record of 1.7 GW of new wind power installed in 2021.
In Asia, the Taiwanese market continued to play a significant role last year simply because offshore wind farm construction remained strong at 933 MW. Japan, with 704 MW, confirmed that it will not neglect onshore wind farm expansion, despite adding 100 MW of new offshore capacity. Uzbekistan, with an estimated 500 MW of new capacity, as a comparison with Irena data suggests, also expects GWEC to maintain a stable global market position in the coming years. Even in Africa, two countries, Egypt and Morocco, are already regularly establishing themselves as leading markets, following the commissioning of wind farms with 793.5 MW and 520 MW, respectively.
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