At the beginning of March 2017 PES asked Steve Sawyer, secretary general GWEC, for his informed perspective on current wind production worldwide and his short term predictions.
Overall, the wind industry globally started the year in good shape, with solid prospects for 2017 and beyond.
Although we didn’t reach the 60 GW mark in 2016, largely because China ‘only’ installed 23 GW instead of last year’s phenomenal 30 GW, the industry chalked up 12.6% growth in cumulative capacity; with a 54.6 GW market leading to a total capacity at the end of the year of 486.7 GW, which will have by now (March 2017) passed 500 GW in total. In addition to China, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Canada were down a bit on the 2015 market; but these are largely cyclical issues, except in the case of South Africa and we expect to see them all turn around in 2017.
India set a new national record with 3,612 MW of new installations, pushing it into fourth place in terms of annual capacity growth, and cementing it’s fourth place position in cumulative terms, behind China, the US and Germany. Germany passed the 50 GW mark in 2016 with installations of 5,443 MW, which was nonetheless down a little bit on 2015’s figure which was somewhat inflated by late connections of offshore wind projects which were actually ready to go in 2014.
US installations of 8,203 MW were about the same as 2015’s, and despite the political goings-on, seem to be on track for a strong 2017, with 18+ GW either under construction or in advanced stages of development. So far so good – fingers crossed!
