Global Wind Energy Council: 2023 is the best year yet for the global wind industry

The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has prepared and published the latest Global Wind Energy Report.

2023 was the most successful year for the global wind energy sector in its history. The number of newly commissioned wind power capacities increased by as much as 50% compared to the previous year. Thanks to 117 GW of new wind farms commissioned last year, the world’s total wind power capacity passed its first milestone of 1 TW.

2023 was also the first year in history when 100 GW of wind power capacity was commissioned onshore.

China and the United States remain the world leaders in the development of onshore wind energy. Next are Brazil, Germany and India.

After a two-year decline, China implemented 69 GW of wind energy projects. In general, all countries in the Asia-Pacific region showed record growth in onshore wind power.

In the United States, despite a rush of onshore capacity commissioning in the fourth quarter, only 6.4 GW of new capacity was commissioned over the year, what is the lowest since 2014.

The total capacity of global offshore wind power increased by 10.8 GW reaching 75.2 GW. China continues to hold the leading position in this sector with 6.3 GW of new capacity for the year.

The GWEC does not call last year a record year for onshore wind development in Europe, but notes that the region experienced its second best year in offshore wind capacity additions. A total of 3.8 GW of new offshore wind capacity were added in Europe, driven primarily by the Netherlands.

The European region continues to lead the way in the development of floating wind farm infrastructure. Last year, 37 MW of such wind farms were added in the region, bringing the total capacity of the European floating wind energy market to 200 MW.

The number of employees in the industry had been growing up to 1.4 million over the past decades and continues to grow.

Despite a number of challenges for the global wind energy market such as changing and costly supply chains, integration and flexibility of wind generation, outdated and insufficient power grids, labor shortages, ineffective industry policies, etc. GWEC predicts that another 791 GW of new wind power capacity will be added worldwide over the next 5 years.

Click here to read the full report.