By Wanliang Liang, China Director, Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC)

Despite initial setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 is set to be a landmark year for China’s wind power sector. The industry is preparing to welcome renewed momentum following President Xi Jinping’s commitment to reaching peak emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, which suggests a more aggressive growth scenario than most previous forecasts.

In 2019, China installed 24 GW of onshore wind and 2.4 GW of offshore wind capacity, representing 40 per cent and 37 per cent of total global installations respectively, an achievement that cemented China’s position as the world’s largest market for both onshore and offshore wind. To reach carbon neutrality by 2060, China will need to add 100 GW clean energy capacity per year, and current estimates suggest that wind power’s share will reach 30 to 40 GW annually in the next decades.

Local and international wind power corporates are moving fast to ensure that their growth frameworks are aligned with China’s renewed commitments to supporting the uptake of clean energy. On the occasion of China Wind Power on 14-16 October 2020, representatives from more than 400 wind energy companies across the world adopted the Beijing Declaration on Wind Energy, a pledge that highlights the crucial role of wind power in pursuing green recovery and ecological civilisation in China.

The signatories committed to a five-step action plan, which includes:

• Drawing up an industrial development plan to support the carbon neutrality goal to promote the sound and rapid development of wind power actively
• Creating a favourable and stable industrial policy framework to boost market confidence, reduce costs and ensuring sustainable industrial development
• Recognising wind power into a driving force of green recovery
• Promoting a ‘green revolution’ on the power consumption side, by raising the share of green energy and supporting mechanisms to increase demand
• Fostering closer international cooperation mechanisms between governments and the global industrial chain

Detailed long-term directives on how China plans to reach its ambitious 2060 carbon neutrality target are expected to emerge from the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), which will be approved and announced in early spring of 2021.

It is worth noting that while the global crisis caused a slowdown in first-quarter operations for wind power developers, China’s wind sector has demonstrated extraordinary resilience in the face of the crisis.

In May of 2019, the central government’s announced plans to halt subsidies for both onshore and offshore wind from 2021 and 2022 respectively propelled an ‘installation rush’ which was forecasted to bring about a new record year for China’s wind installations in 2020.

As disruptions on global supply chains caused by COVID-19 became evident, many global companies were forced to delay or halt key operations.

On 8 April, while many countries across the world were forced into lockdown, GWEC hosted a webcast with key stakeholders from China’s wind industry to discuss the pandemic’s early impact on supply chain and projects development. We learned that most manufacturers in China had resumed productions as early as February. In addition, many of our members did not adjust their annual delivery target despite a slow first quarter, which already suggested a positive outlook for 2020.

Together with local partners, GWEC organised both virtual and in-person events on China’s offshore wind market during the summer. By engaging with our local partners, GWEC learnt that the impact of COVID-19 on the Chinese wind industry’s operations in the second half of the year was less significant compared to the first months of 2020. Discussions increasingly focused on how to satisfy the huge demand during the current installation rush and how to meet the coming parity era.

Thanks to the early year installation rush, parity issues, COVID-19 and the recently announced 2060 carbon neutrality target, 2020 will be remembered as a landmark year for China’s wind power sector. How should the industry develop as wind power goes subsidy-free in the world’s biggest market and continue to meet China’s ambitious decarbonisation goals? That remains the central question.

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: GWEC