Ground and offshore wind turbines shot in Flevoland, the Netherlands.
Misha Keiser Image source Getty Images
The wind sector had its second best year in 2021, but installations will need to increase dramatically to meet zero net targets, according to a new report from the Global Wind Energy Council.
Published on Monday, GWEC’s 2022 Global Wind Report says 93.6 gigawatts of power were installed last year, slightly lower than 95.3 GW in 2020. Cumulative capacity rose to 837 GW. Capacity refers to the maximum amount of electricity that installations can produce, not what they necessarily generate.
Breaking things down, the offshore wind segment installed 21.1 GW in 2021, its best year. Onshore wind installations reached 72.5 GW last year, up from 88.4 GW in 2020.
According to GWEC – whose members include companies such as Vestas, Orsted and Shell – the main drivers of the decline in onshore installations are China and the United States
For China, where 30.7 GW were installed in 2021 compared to more than 50 GW in 2020, GWEC cited the end of the country’s preferential tariffs as the reason for the decline.
The United States installed 12.7 GW of ground capacity in 2021, down 4.16 GW from 2020. GWEC cited factors including “COVID-19 disruptions and supply chain problems” that “delayed construction of the project from the 3rd quarter of 2021 onwards. “
Net zero concerns
Along with his data, the GWEC report also issued a warning and called for a significant increase in capacity.
“At the current rate of installation,” it says, “GWEC Market Intelligence predicts that by 2030 we will have less than two-thirds of the wind power capacity needed for 1.5 ° C and a net zero run,” which practically dooms us to miss our climate goals. “
The report later added that “global wind power plants must be doubled from the 94 GW installed in 2021 during this decade to meet our 2050 targets.”
The figure of 1.5 refers to the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming “to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels” and was adopted in December 2015.
According to the UN, in order to maintain global warming “up to no more than 1.5 ° C… emissions must be reduced by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050”.
Among other things, Monday’s GWEC report called for streamlining authorization procedures and a “stronger international regulatory framework to tackle increased competition for commodities and critical minerals.”
Huge obstacles
In a statement Monday, GWEC CEO Ben Beckwell said that “increasing growth to the level needed to reach net zero and achieve energy security will require a new, more proactive approach to policy-making around the world.” .
“The events of the last year, which saw economies and consumers exposed to extreme volatility in fossil fuels and high prices around the world, are a symptom of a volatile and chaotic energy transition,” Beckwell continued.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said, “revealed the effects of dependence on fossil fuel imports on energy security.”
“The last 12 months should serve as a huge wake-up call that we need to move decisively forward and move towards 21st century renewable energy systems.”
Not surprisingly, organizations such as GWEC are calling for an increase in renewable energy, but achieving any significant change in the planet’s energy mix is a huge task.
Fossil fuels are rooted in the global energy mix, and companies continue to discover and develop oil and gas fields around the world.
In fact, in March, the International Energy Agency announced that in 2021, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose to their highest level in history. The IEA found that energy-related global CO2 emissions increased by 6% in 2021 to reach a record high of 36.3 billion metric tons.
Also that month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the planet had come out of last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow with “some naive optimism” and was “naive about the climate catastrophe”.