The wind is picking up, but only in China
For the past few years, the global wind industry has been stuck in the doldrums. With rising interest rates and materials costs whittling away developers’ profit margins, and political and economic elites cooling on the energy transition, installations of new turbines went sideways. Even as the electric vehicle and solar industries gathered speed, wind ran into turbulence. The sector was left drenched in red ink, project cancellations, and failed auctions.
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That appears to be ending — but don’t get your hopes up too much. If wind is recovering, credit goes to the nation that’s currently the bogeyman stalking the EV and solar sectors: China.
First to the good news. A record 117 gigawatts of new wind turbines were installed around the world last year, the Global Wind Energy Council, a trade body, said in a report last week.
That’s a stunning 50% pace of growth compared to the previous year, and finally puts the world above the previous 95 GW record set in 2020. Wind generated nearly 2.5 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, GWEC found — enough to provide close to 90% of the European Union’s plug power. It’s likely to overtake nuclear as the world’s biggest source of clean energy (after hydroelectricity) some time in the next 12 months.
The bad news comes if you take China out of the equation. Do that, and it looks like we’ve been stuck in neutral for three years. Ex-China installs last year were just 41 GW — an increase of only 0.088 GW relative
