WFO Says China Connected 12.7 GW of Offshore Wind in 2021

A report just released by World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO) states that China connected 12.7 GW of new offshore wind capacity to its grid last year. This is 4.2 GW less than reported last month based on data from China’s National Energy Administration.

China grew with 12,689 MW of newly installed capacity during 2021, increasing its total installed capacity to 19.7 GW, WFO’s report reads, noting that it counts offshore wind capacity in operation as that where all turbines are installed and first power was produced.

As reported last month, data from the National Energy Administration had shown the country connected 16.9 GW of offshore wind capacity to the grid in 2021. After ending 2020 with 9,898 MW of installed capacity, China had 26,798 MW of connected offshore wind at the end of last year, according to that data, which is a 171 per cent increase compared to the previous year.

The difference between figures of China’s National Energy Administration and the ones reported by WFO is due to definition of operational capacity, WFO noted.

In either case, the massive volume of newly connected offshore wind capacity in China last year was a result of the developers’ race to grid-connect their projects in time, before the country’s Feed-in-Tariff deadline expired on 31 December 2021.

WFO’s Global Offshore Wind Report 2021 states that 53 new offshore wind farms went into operation in 2021 worldwide of which 45 were installed in China.

Former leader of (newly) installed capacity, the UK, saw three offshore wind farms going online, two were put into operation in the Netherlands, while Denmark, Norway, and Taiwan each saw one project starting full operation.

With 19.7 GW of installed capacity, according to WFO, China is now the world’s largest offshore wind market by far, almost as much as the UK (12.3 GW) and Germany (7.7 GW) combined, and 40 per cent of the world’s total offshore wind capacity is now installed in China.

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