The wind industry installed 93GW of new capacity in 2020, a 53% year-on-year increase, according to a new report from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).
The global wind power market has nearly quadrupled in size over the past decade with record growth in 2020 driven by a surge of installations in China and the US, the ‘Global Wind Report 2021’ found.
Together, the US and China installed 75% of new installations in 2020 and account for over half of the world’s total wind power capacity, said GWEC.
Today, there is now 743GW of wind power capacity worldwide GWEC’s 16th annual flagship report found.
GWEC’s report shows that the current rate of wind power deployment will not be enough to achieve carbon neutrality by the middle of this century, and said “urgent action” must be taken by policymakers now to scale up wind power at the necessary pace.
Scenarios that have been established by international energy bodies such as IRENA and the IEA, state a minimum of 180GW of new wind needs to be installed every year to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and will need to increase to 280GW annually to maintain a pathway compliant with meeting net zero by 2050.
GWEC is calling on policymakers to take a true ‘climate emergency’ approach to allow a faster ramp up including reforming administrative structures in order to speed up and streamline licensing and permitting for projects and revamping 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.
GWEC CEO Ben Backwell said: “People and governments around the world are realising that we have a limited window to head off dangerous climate change.
“While many major economies have announced long-term net zero targets, we need to make sure that urgent and meaningful actions are taken now to make sure this ambition is matched with fast growing investment and installations of renewable power on the ground and in the water.”