News Release from windfair.net

Wind Industry Profile of

windfair.net

03/24/2023

Goldwind clutches top turbine maker spot from Vestas

“Alarm bells should be ringing,” says Cristian Dinca, wind analyst at BloombergNEF, as global commissioning of wind turbines fell 15% to 86GW in 2022. For the first time, a Chinese turbine manufacturer claims the throne of the annual ranking.

Supply chain constraints and uncertainty around subsidies hit project development and are to blame for a sharp 15% decline of installations in 2023, says research company BloombergNEF (BNEF).

BNEF’s 2022 Global Wind Turbine Market Shares report finds that developers brought online 86 GW of wind turbines globally in 2022, after growth in installations stalled in the world’s two largest markets, China and the US. The majority of new wind farms were added on land (89%), as commissioning of new offshore turbines fell to 9.1 GW – down 46% compared with 2021.

“Governments around the world are increasing their ambition on decarbonization and, at the same time, new additions are slowing on the ground," says Cristian Dinca, wind analyst at BloombergNEF and lead author of the report.

Chinese Goldwind edged out Danish manufacturer Vestas to the top spot in the global wind turbine supplier ranking. The company supplied 12.7 GW of projects last year, almost 90% of which were for its home market. Vestas commissioned 12.3 GW overall in 2022, 3 GW ahead of its US-based rival GE, which was in third place. This meant that the top three spots were filled by companies from China, Europe and the US, respectively. But no less than six turbine manufacturers based in China made the top 10 in BNEF’s global ranking.

Image: BloombergNEF

The year after China’s national feed-in premium for offshore wind projects expired, global offshore wind installations fell steeply in 2022. The UK managed to rescue statistics as the country commissioned over 3GW of offshore wind for the first time. European turbine makers seized the opportunity, as Vestas secured first place in the offshore wind ranking ahead of Chinese manufacturer Shanghai Electric, while Mingyang took third place. “We expect the drop in offshore wind to be short-lived,” said Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at BloombergNEF. “Germany and the Netherlands will install major projects again in 2023, while the industry will also ramp up in newer markets like France and Taiwan.”