Vestas, Goldwind, Siemens Gamesa, Envision and General Electric (GE), are the top wind turbine makers in 2021, according to a new report by research company BloombergNEF (BNEF).
Mingyang, Nordex, Shanghai Electric and Dongfan Electric are the other leaders in the top wind turbine market in 2021.
The wind industry posted another record for new commissioned capacity in 2021, as total additions fell just short of 100 gigawatts for the second year in a row.
Developers brought online some 99.2 gigawatts of wind turbines globally in 2021, edging past the 98.5 gigawatts commissioned the previous year, the BNEF report said.
While the majority was added on land (83 percent), additions of new offshore turbines rose to 16.8 gigawatts – a 161 percent increase compared with 2020, BNEF’s 2021 Global Wind Turbine Market Shares report finds.
Top wind turbine makers
Vestas regained its spot at the top of the ranking, adding 15.2 gigawatts worldwide.
Goldwind was in second place with 12 gigawatts. Siemens Gamesa took the third spot in the ranking. General Electric, the previous year’s leading turbine maker, fell to fifth place as installations dropped 22 percent in its home market the U.S.
“A new era of wind build is truly under way – a second near-100-gigawatt year represents a new status-quo for the industry,” said Isabelle Edwards, senior analyst at BloombergNEF and lead author of the report.
BNEF identified 55.8 gigawatts of new wind capacity commissioned in China last year. Despite global commodities inflation and supply-chain chaos, annual installations in China were only two gigawatts shy of the record set in 2020.
The scheduled end to the China’s offshore wind feed-in tariff saw developers install 14.2 gigawatts of offshore wind turbines, a threefold jump year-on-year. China’s Shanghai Electric, Mingyang, Goldwind and CSSC Haizhuang capitalized on this growth to take the top four spots in BNEF’s offshore wind ranking. Siemens Gamesa, which had been top of the rankings since 2017, slipped down to sixth place, just behind Vestas.
China dominated the offshore wind market.
“As offshore installations drop off in China in 2022, other markets are set to fill the gap. The U.K. will add more than three gigawatts of offshore wind for the first time this year, while activity will also pick up in new market Taiwan,” said Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at BloombergNEF.
The U.S. remains the second largest market for new wind build, adding 13 gigawatts in 2021. China and the US accounted for two-thirds of new global wind capacity last year. Vietnam broke into the top three global wind markets for the first time, bringing online 3.6 gigawatts of onshore and near-shore wind farms.