OFFSHORE WIND
Record year for global wind power GLOBAL WIND POWER GROWTH MUST TRIPLE OVER NEXT DECADE TO ACHIEVE NET ZERO
Steady growth in Europe was led by the Netherlands which installed nearly 1.5GW of new offshore wind in 2020. In the Netherlands, Ørsted’s 752MW Borssele 1 & 2 offshore wind farm was commissioned end of 2020.
Photo courtesy of Ørsted/Sky Pictures.
2020 WAS A RECORD YEAR FOR THE GLOBAL WIND POWER INDUSTRY, BUT THE 16TH GLOBAL WIND REPORT PUBLISHED BY GWEC WARNS THAT THE WORLD NEEDS TO INSTALL NEW WIND POWER CAPACITY THREE TIMES FASTER OVER THE NEXT DECADE TO ACHIEVE GLOBAL CLIMATE TARGETS. ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF GWEC, UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE.
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he global wind industry installed a record 93GW of new capacity in 2020 – a 53% year-on-year increase, showing strong resilience in the face of COVID-19. Total global wind power capacity is now up to 743GW, helping the world to avoid over 1.1t billion of CO2 annually – equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of South America. However, the world needs to be installing a minimum of 180GW of new wind energy every single year to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, meaning that the industry and policymakers need to act fast to accelerate deployment. GWEC is calling on policymakers to take a true ‘climate emergency’ approach to allow a faster ramp up including:
• Eliminating red tape and reforming administrative structures to speed up and streamline licensing and permitting for projects. • Carry out a massive increase in investments in grid, ports and other infrastructure needed to allow the ramp up in installations. • Re-vamp energy markets to ensure that they account for the true social costs of polluting fossil fuels and facilitate a rapid transition to a system based on renewable energy.
Cost-competitive
Through technology innovations and economies of scale, the global wind power market has nearly quadrupled in size over
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08-04-2021 12:49
