Offshore pipeline puts China in pole position for sector leadership

China’s offshore wind power capacity grew by 1.4GW in the first half of 2020, taking its total installed capacity to 6.4GW.

At the end of June, China also had more offshore wind capacity under construction (4,618MW) than the Netherlands (1,503MW), the UK (857MW), Denmark (605MW), Belgium (487MW) and South Korea (60MW) combined.

With this construction pipeline, China will soon overtake Germany in total capacity, the World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO) noted.

According to the WFO’s report, covering the first half of 2020, the UK remains the world’s biggest offshore wind market with more than 10GW, of which 714MW was added in H1 2020.

Germany is second on 7.7GW, but only 203 MW of new capacity was added during the first six months of 2020.

Gunnar Herzig, WFO managing director, said: “The dominance of offshore wind construction activities in China shows the immense dynamic and progress of Chinese market participants.”

Ten new offshore wind projects went into operation in the UK, China, Germany, Portugal, Belgium and the US, WFO said. A number of small pilot projects, using floating technolgy, meant the average capacity of new developments fell from 325MW in H1 2019 to 254MW in the same period this year.

There are 157 offshore wind projects currently in operation, with 105 in Europe, 50 in Asia and just two in US, the report said.