According to a report by the Global Wind Energy Council released in April 2025, progress to cut emissions and increase renewable energy capacity globally is on course. In 2024, 90% of all expansion in the power sector was in renewables, with 20% of that growth coming from wind energy.
The Global Wind Report shows that the wind industry installed a record 117GW of new capacity globally in 2024. Despite the numbers being globally significant, GWEC warns that ambitions to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 face significant challenges and that the growth is still too concentrated in too few regions.
The report indicates 109 GW of new onshore wind and 8 GW of offshore wind, Asia Pacific leading with 76% of new capacity, with 68% of the global new capacity owed to China. Africa and the Middle East saw a 107% year-on-year growth rate thanks to Egypt’s 795 MW installation and Saudi Arabia’s 390 MW. North America, LATAM, and Europe experienced a decline in new installations compared with 2023.
The 2025 Global Wind Report includes data from every region of the world. Last year’s growth to 109 GW of new onshore wind and 8 GW of offshore wind brings global cumulative capacity of wind energy to 1,136 GW, spread across all continents, with 55 countries installing wind turbines last year.
Challenges in The Wind Energy Market and Solutions
According to Ben Backwell, CEO of GWEC, despite more challenging macroeconomic headwinds over the last few years, the wind industry had broken new installation records.
“While wind energy continues to drive investment and jobs, improve energy security and lower consumer costs, we are seeing a more volatile policy environment in some parts of the world, including ideologically driven attacks on wind and renewables and the halting of under-construction projects, threatening investment certainty,” he added.
Finance and macroeconomic headwinds are among the challenges facing the growth of the wind energy sector. Rises in commodity prices, in combination with rises in the cost of labor, logistics, and higher costs of capital due to interest rates and risk premiums, are all affecting project economics, resulting in projects stalling.
The supply chain is further plagued by misalignment between the current supply chain footprint and the technology’s accelerated growth trajectory. Lack of market volume and power price volatility, the ‘rapid innovation curse’ of ever-increasing turbine sizes, and a political push for inflexible local content rules and other protectionist measures adding further uncertainty and additional costs are identified as contributing factors to this overall trend.
The report further highlights that to ensure robust, flexible auction designs that accommodate evolving economic realities, auction mechanisms need to undergo reforms to reflect new market realities. A more disciplined approach—where industry and governments work together to get risk-sharing right, setting achievable long-term revenue frameworks and support to de-risk projects—is essential for sustainable industry growth.
Moreover, as demand for power rises, grid infrastructure requires expansion and modernization. Additionally, to achieve a robust supply chain, permitting and regulatory processes should be streamlined to mitigate congestion and curtailment. This will enable governments to achieve their targets.
Further, the industry encounters limitations from trade barriers and market fragmentation. According to Mr. Backwell, the aggressive stoking of tariff wars adds further uncertainty to international investment decisions and threatens to disrupt the international supply chains relied on by the wind industry.
“The full costs on our industry of the wide array of declared and threatened tariffs we have seen, both general and on specific commodities such as steel, have yet to be fully calculated,” he added.
He emphasized that it’s vital that policymakers around the world don’t take their eyes off the prize, ensure stable and predictable market frameworks, work within multilateral frameworks to ensure free and fair trade, and work with investors and industry to enable rapid deployment of clean, efficient wind power to support economic growth, resilience, and prosperity.
Echoing Mr. Backwell’s sentiment, Jonathan Cole, Chair of the Global Wind Energy Council, said open and fair trade alongside healthy supply chains must be promoted.
“We must make more effort to sell the benefits of our sector to all aspects of the political spectrum, so that we can become less politically sensitive and can be seen as the force for good that we know ourselves to be,” he added.
Girish Tanti, Deputy CEO of Suzlon Group and Vice Chair, GWEC, said, “Undoubtedly, wind allows us to couple economic viability with our climate purpose. Tripling renewables and phasing out fossil fuels are the most viable solutions to combat climate change, but we must act now.”
He emphasized that there is no Planet B, and it is our responsibility to protect those most affected by the perils of global warming.
“As we enter a new era in renewable energy, the Global Wind Report 2025 serves as a beacon of hope and a call to action for the global community. The journey of wind energy has been nothing short of remarkable, evolving from a niche technology to a mainstream source of power that is now integral to our energy transition efforts,” said Girish Tanti.
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