Page 5 - AsiaElec Week 21
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AsiaElec COMMENTARY AsiaElec
On the one hand, many projects’ opening and investment decisions have been put on hold as construction slows and supply chains buckle.
However, renewables has proved to be the most resilient part of the energy sector, outper- forming fossil fuels.
“2020 was forecasted to be another record-breaking year; however, disruption of the global supply chain and delays on wind pro- ject execution have forced major stakeholders in the wind industry to withdraw their 2020 finan- cial and production guidance as well as adjust their market outlook for the year,” said GWEC strategy director Feng Zhao.
Zhao noted that the global supply industry is dominated by Western companies such as Vestas and Siemens Gamesa on the one hand, and Chinese competitors on the other. Indeed, while these two European suppliers were the best performers in 2019, eight of the top 15 ven- dors were Chinese.
“With the COVID-19 crisis now disrupting supply chains, manufacturing and project exe- cution globally, it is likely that these rankings will shift in 2020 depending on how quickly countries and businesses can recover from the pandemic,” he said.
A second determiner of manufacturers’ for- tunes in the future is how they adapt to market changes, adding higher value project manage- ment and moving away from being simply sup- pliers of turbines.
“Within this competitive landscape, current trends favour companies that shift from being solely manufacturers to evolving into holistic systems and solution providers to allow for
greater market diversification,” GWEC CEO Ben Backwell said.
Supply and demand
This supply data differs from previous demand- side information contained in a separate GWEC report released in March, which used grid con- nection data, generally from system operators, to show that 60.4 GW of new capacity was con- nected to national grids in 2019, 19% more than 2018.
However, while supply-side data reached its highest ever level of 63 GW in 2019, demand- side totalled 60.4 GW. The difference suggests that some turbines have been installed at wind farms, but have not yet entered commercial operation.
Demand-side data has fallen from the record of 63.788 GW of grid connections seen in 2015. The March report highlighted that China
and US were the world’s largest onshore mar- kets, accounting for 60% of the 54.3 GW of new onshore capacity. Offshore, capacity additions reached 6.1%.
Both reports highlight that the wind sector has reached maturity and was a major driver of technological innovation as turbines grew in size and wind farms were built further offshore.
With the US and China the two largest wind markets worldwide, much will demand on how they manage to emerge from their COVID-19 lockdowns.
Meanwhile, with growth faster in the offshore sector than onshore, the UK and Danish mar- kets will also drive the future market share of the global manufacturers.
Week 21 27•May•2020 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P5
