Offshore wind to reach 234 GW in 2030, 25% in China

The world will top 234 GW of installed offshore wind capacity in 2030, up from 29.1 GW in 2019, and China will account for a quarter of the total.

This is according to a report by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), which has revised up its forecast for offshore wind capacity additions to more than 205 GW through 2030. The GWEC Market Intelligence’s pre-COVID-19 forecast was lower by 15 GW.

“Over the coming decade we will see emerging offshore markets like Japan, Korea and Vietnam move to full deployment, and see the first offshore turbines installed in a number of new countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa,” said the council’s CEO Ben Backwell.

The top five offshore wind markets in 2030 are expected to be China (58.8 GW), the UK (40.3 GW), the US (22.6 GW), Germany (20 GW) and the Netherlands (11.4 GW). Floating wind farms will bring at least 6.2 GW of the new capacity.

Since 2013, the offshore market globally has been growing by 24% each year on average. The new installations in 2019 reached 6.1 GW, led by China (2.4 GW), the UK (1.8 GW) and Germany (1.1 GW). The UK is now the leader in terms of cumulative capacity with 9.7 GW, followed by Germany with 7.5 GW and China with 6.8 GW.

GWEC also calculates that more than 900,000 offshore wind jobs will be created in the next 10 years.

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