Global installations of wind and solar capacity combined to hit a new record around 160GW in 2018, according to researcher BloombergNEF, with the PV industry in particular putting up stunning growth numbers despite the crash of the Chinese market.

The biggest story of 2018 for the global renewables industry was China’s domestic solar market. Last June Beijing dumped cold water on the market, by far the world’s largest, in an effort to stem the sector’s ballooning subsidies.

As a result, investment in Chinese solar projects plunged 53% last year, BNEF says, to $40bn. Coming off a record performance in 2017, China’s slowdown dragged on total global clean-energy investment, which fell 8% last year to $332bn.

Yet the dip in total spending belies a market that continues to grow in absolute gigawatts installed, as costs continue to decline. All told, the world added more than 160GW of new wind and solar capacity in 2018, including a record 109GW of solar, according to BNEF's closely watched annual figures, among the first put out by an analysis group in the new year.

The slowdown in China’s solar market led to a glut of cheap modules around the world, helping to fuel installation growth in other markets.

With annual global wind installations close to 55GW last year, the gap between the wind and solar sector was wider than it’s ever been. Wind was typically the larger of the two markets until 2015, its peak year for global installations. Since then solar has grown at a much faster rate.

However, global wind investment proved far more resilient than solar last year, with the wind market drawing in 3% more investment dollars than it did the year prior, reaching $129bn. That was nearly equal to solar's $131bn of investment.

Within the wind industry, the offshore market is particularly buoyant, with investment up 14% last year to $26bn – boosted by the financing of five billion-dollar-plus offshore wind projects in Europe, including the 950MW Moray East led by EDPR, and the start of construction at more than a dozen Chinese projects.

The offshore wind market is increasingly tilting away from Europe, says David Hostert, BNEF’s head of wind analysis. “Countries such as the UK and Germany pioneered this industry and will remain important, but China is taking over as the biggest market and new locations such as Taiwan and the US East Coast are seeing strong interest from developers.”

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Offshore wind now accounts for more than one-third of all clean-energy investment in Europe. However, the European market also benefited last year from a “sharp recovery” in Spanish solar investment and the continued build-out of large wind farms in Sweden and Norway, BNEF notes.

Despite the drop-off in Chinese solar installations, China remains by far the world’s largest destination for clean-energy investment, coming in at $100bn last year.

The US, the world’s number-two market, chalked up 12% investment growth last year, reaching $64bn, as developers ramp up efforts to complete wind and solar projects ahead of the expiration of federal subsidies. The next two years are expected to be the biggest in history for US wind installations.

Globally, onshore wind investment was up a modest 2% last year to $101bn, a pot that includes Enel’s 700MW suite of projects in South Africa and US utility Xcel Energy’s recently completed 600MW Rush Creek wind farm in the state of Colorado.

Rounding out the top five markets for investment last year were Japan, India and Germany.

In addition to the financing of renewables projects, BNEF’s $332bn of total clean-energy spending includes equity raised by smart grid, digital energy, energy storage and electric-vehicle companies.