Asia poised to be the largest offshore market by end-2022: GWEC

China has an 80% share in the total installations last year.

Asia is expected to replace Europe as the world’s largest offshore market by the end of 2022 in terms of cumulative installations, following China’s dominance in the deployment of offshore wind last year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).

In its Global Offshore Wind Report 2022, GWEC said Europe accounted for the largest share of offshore wind globally with 50.4% share in the total installations by the end of 2021, followed by Asia with 49.5% market share.

READ MORE: Offshore wind industry sees 21.1GW additional capacity in 2021

China, however, accounted for 80% of new installations last year, reaching 16,900MW of capacity. GWEC also said Vietnam’s “proactive approach” also delivered further capacity.

Asia is also seen to deploy over 5,881MW capacity in the year, 4,000MW of which will come from China, higher than the 3,174MW additional capacity expected for Europe, GWEC said.

“Although Asia will replace Europe as the world’s largest regional offshore wind market by cumulative installations by the end of 2022, Europe is expected to recapture this title from 2031,” the report read.

GWEC said Europe is likely to continue increasing the annual offshore wind installations, exceeding 10GW in 2026, and 25GW in 2030.