China’s wind power capacity trebling to 347 GW by 2025

China’s wind power capacity is projected to treble to 347.2 GW by 2025 from 115.6 GW in 2014, an increase that seems rather unimpressive when compared with the nearly twenty-fold jump since 2007.

Harshavardhan Reddy Nagatham, GlobalData’s analyst covering renewable energy, explains this slowdown “with the inability of China’s underdeveloped electrical grid to accommodate the increasing number of wind turbines in remote areas”. Nagatham believes that China will not be able to keep the previous wind capacity additions pace over the next 10 years, despite efforts to expand and upgrade the grid. Instead, it will be deploying between 20 GW and 22 GW of wind turbines annually, he says in GlobalData’s latest Wind Power Market report.

China’s onshore wind capacity is seen to dominate at 334.7 GW, while its offshore wind parks will total just 12.4 GW in 2025.

In the meantime, growth in wind installations primarily within the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region will boost the world’s total wind power capacity to 962.6 GW by 2025, according to GlobalData. Nagatham projects sustainable future growth in India, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan. During the period, the APAC region’s total will surge to 437.8 GW from 148.2 GW and will thus account for around 45.5% of the world’s cumulative wind capacity.

In South and Central America, countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico are expected to add up to 45.6 GW.