The US wind market surged ahead in the first quarter of 2025 with 2100MW of installations – but regulatory uncertainty led to a significant pullback in wind turbine orders, a report revealed today.
The US Wind Energy Monitor report, released by Wood Mackenzie and the American Clean Power Association (ACP), revealed that in Q1 2025, the US wind sector more than doubled activity on the previous year’s quarter.
The report shows that all installations in Q1 came from newbuild onshore activity. Wood Mackenzie projects that a total of 8.1GW of installed capacity will come online this year, including onshore, offshore, and repowering projects.
However, tariffs and policy uncertainty have placed significant challenges on the market, driving a 50% decrease in turbine orders for the first six months of 2025 compared to the same period last year, taking them to their lowest level since 2020.
“The surge in first-quarter wind installations, combined with a strong development pipeline, underscores the wind industry’s resilience and its capacity to rapidly deliver the clean, affordable, and reliable energy America needs,” said John Hensley, ACP’s senior vice president of markets and policy analysis.
“But this momentum is threatened by the changing policy landscape. Regulatory obstructions will drive up costs, putting at risk the nation’s ability to meet its energy demands with homegrown clean power.”
Turbine orders have slowed in 2025, but demand – especially for safe harbour orders – is projected to rebound in the second half following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s (OBBBA) final passage.
“Market volatility will prompt a short-term decrease in onshore additions,” said Leila Garcia da Fonseca (pictured), director of research at Wood Mackenzie. “A quarter-over-quarter net reduction of roughly 430MW in the US onshore wind outlook from 2025-2029 reflects growing uncertainty for currently under-development projects, mainly driven by ongoing permitting challenges, tariff risk, and now a sunset of tax credits.”
A late-cycle spike is anticipated in 2029-2030 with developers looking to capitalise ahead of the tax credit expiration. Western states, which will add 9.4GW of installations through 2029, will see more activity than other regions, Wood Mackenzie said.
As almost all offshore projects in Wood Mackenzie’s five-year outlook are already under construction, the outlook remains largely unchanged. The analysts are projecting a total of 5.9GW of offshore wind capacity to come online by 2029.
“While we assume projects currently under construction or heading to construction will come online, we don’t expect to see any additional projects take a final investment decision during President Trump’s second term in office,” said Garcia da Fonseca. “This could have a significant impact on the number of offshore projects constructed in the 2030s.”
Despite near-term volatility, Wood Mackenzie forecasts average annual installations of 8.9GW over the next five years across onshore, offshore, and repowering segments.