A similar ratio was also typical for the implemented projects: in China, between January-June 2022, there were commissioned 25 offshore wind farms consisting of two or more turbines, whereas in the rest of the world – eight, including five in Vietnam and one each in the UK, Italy and South Korea. The average installed capacity of the new farms – 205 MW – was just over 20% below the same figure for the first half of 2021 (261 MW). The total capacity of the operating offshore wind turbines increased from 48.2 GW to 54.9 GW, 45% of which (24.9 GW) is in China. The number of the offshore wind farms has reached 248, 134 of which are located in Asia, 112 in Europe and two – in the USA.
The capacity of the wind turbines under construction was 11.9 GW by July 2022: among the nine countries working on the new projects, the leaders were China (3.2 GW), Taiwan (2.5 GW) and the Netherlands (2.3 GW), followed behind by the UK (1.6 GW), France (1.5 GW) and Germany (599 MW), as well as Japan (140 MW), Norway (88 MW) and Vietnam (80 MW). In total, 29 wind farms are under construction in the world, including 10 in China, four in Taiwan, two in Japan, 1onein Vietnam and 12 in Europe.
In general, the WFO data confirmed last year ‘s tendencies when China, with 17.4 GW added, became the world’s leader by capacities of the operating offshore wind power plants (WPP), leaving behind Great Britain where the capacities of the offshore WPPs increased only by 2,3 GW. Until recently, one of the industry’s development drivers in the PRC was the feed-in tariffs, which guaranteed clean energy suppliers an opportunity to connect to the general power grid, as well as to purchase the entire volume of the generated electricity at the fixed prices. This provided Chinese offshore WPPs with lower operating costs ($35 per MWh of generation) than their US competitors ($25 per MWh, according to the 2020 International Energy Agency data). The effect of green tariffs was suspended in China in November 2021, but this has not affected the construction pace of the offshore WPPs yet.
