Global wind market rebounds in 2014
The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has launched its Global Wind Report – Annual Market Update, which looks at the status of the global industry, along with market projections for the years 2014 to 2018. GWEC expects installations of at least 47GW in 2014, a dramatic increase over 2013 levels.
However, GWEC cautions that without a strong global climate policy, market growth is unlikely to return to the 20–25% or more average growth that has characterised most of the last two decades. In the absence of a global price for carbon, or anything close to it, wind energy’s other attributes come to the fore. Today, in many markets its most compelling selling point is cost-competitiveness. Wind is already competing successfully against heavily subsidised incumbents in a growing number of markets around the world as the technology and its implementation steadily improve. Furthermore, recent events in Ukraine and elsewhere point to wind energy’s contribution to energy security.
According to the also recently released World Wind Energy Report 2013 from the WWEA, wind power contributes close to 4% to the global electricity demand. In total, 103 countries are today using wind power on a commercial basis. China is still by far the leading wind market with a new capacity for 2013 of 16,000MW and a total capacity of 91,324MW. The US market saw a dramatic slump and installed only 1GW, after 13GW in 2012. Asia now has the same installed capacity as Europe (119GW) and is expected to overtake Europe in 2014 as the largest wind continent. The most dynamic markets with highest growth rates can still be found in Latin America and in Eastern Europe as well as for the first time in Africa, where Morocco showed a growth of 70%, the second highest growth rate of all countries, just behind Chile (76%). In some countries, wind power reached very high shares in the electricity supply. In Denmark at 34% and Spain at 21%, wind energy has become the largest source of electricity; also Portugal (more than 20%), Ireland (more than 16%) and Germany (9%) have reached high proportions. By the end of 2013, 7.4GW of offshore wind was installed, and close to one million small wind turbines. For the year 2020, the WWEA sees a wind capacity of more than 700,000MW as being possible.
Brazil Wind Power
Latin America is one of the biggest growth markets at the moment. For instance, wind energy is now the fastest growing source of power generation in Brazil. In 2013, 4.7GW were contracted. The Brazilian wind power potential is estimated as 300GW and the energy industry expectation is to contract at least another 2GW per year until 2020, adding, up to that time, over 20GW of wind energy to the market. And, from 26 till 28 August Rio de Janeiro will be focusing on wind power instead of football. The 5th Brazil Wind Power conference and exhibition, organised annually by ABEEolica, GWEC and CanalEnergia Group, provides a great opportunity to do business in the wind energy market in Brazil and the surrounding region.
Enjoy reading,
Floris Siteur
Publisher