Renewable

March 19 (Renewables Now) - China installed 52 GW of new wind power capacity out of close to 56 GW that were added in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region in 2020, the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has the numbers.

After breaking the wind energy installation record for any country in a single year, China now has more wind power than Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America combined, GWEC said. The organisation's initial data put China's cumulative wind power capacity at 288,320 MW.

“We were expecting an installation rush in China last year due to the phase out of the onshore wind feed-in-tariff by the end of 2020, but the Chinese wind market exceeded our original forecasts by over 73%,” said Feng Zhao, head of market intelligence and strategy at GWEC.

With a total of 55,564 MW of new wind, the APAC region increased installations by 78% year-on-year in 2020, which helped it reach almost 347 GW in total.

Behind China is India with new 1,119 MW in 2020, which for the country was the lowest year on record since 2004 due to regulatory and infrastructure bottlenecks, the wind industry body added.

Below is the list of APAC countries by installed wind power in 2020:

* Figures for China represent initial data as noted by GWEC

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