Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

A High-Water Mark for the Global Wind Industry?

Renewable Energy World: Will 2015 be the high-water mark for annual global wind installations? We recently compiled our data for 2016 in our annual World Wind Energy Market Update 2017 report, finding that—while an enormous amount of wind turbine capacity was installed (over 54.3 GW), this was a 14 percent annual decrease from the over 63.1 GW installed the year before. The downturn is largely the result of China dropping from 30.2 GW installed in 2015 to 23.3 MW in 2016 due to changing incentive rates in that market that created an unusually high installation year as developers rushed to commission projects. Unless there are further incentive changes that foster another huge annual rush in China, the 63.1 GW installed in 2015 is likely to be the high-water mark within our forecast out to 2026.

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