The US wind industry is so far coping with Covid-19 impacts better than most sectors of the world’s largest economy, and 2020 should still be among its best years for capacity additions, according to renewable energy research groups.

Coronavirus has caused more than 101,000 deaths in the US, by far the most in any country. Economists expect at least a 30% decline in gross domestic product in the second quarter. A record 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, driving the unemployment rate to 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression.

But amid the tragedy and economic carnage, wind appears to be holding up.

Wood Mackenzie forecasts 15GW of wind installations which would exceed the 13.1GW industry record in 2012 while Bloomberg NEF estimates 11.1GW. By comparison, new capacity totaled 9.14GW last year and averaged 7.1GW annually last decade.

The different outlooks of the two research groups reflects a wide variety of forecasts over what will be finished in the US this year in such an uncertain climate, with new policy changes that affect deadlines likely to make the situation even more fluid.

The Trump administration late Wednesday gave the industry an extra year to complete an estimated 20GW of more of projects that began construction in 2016 or 2017 and qualify them for federal production tax credits at full or 80% value, in recognition of delays from Covid-19 impacts to supply chains and workforces.

All-in-all, the wind power market looks very robust.

They will now have five years, instead of four, to complete construction without having to prove continuous work on the projects after construction began. This should ease a logjam created as developers rushed to finish about 15GW this year.

“The wind sector by and large, at least in the US, has escaped a lot of the major issues we’ve heard about globally,” Dan Shreve, head of global wind research at WoodMac, said during a web-based seminar to kick off next week’s Cleanpower 2020 virtual event organised by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), a Washington, DC-based trade group. “All-in-all, the market looks very robust.”

Tremendous growth in the global supply chain in recent years has enabled procurement teams from project developers and turbine OEMs to source material for the US from a wide variety of different vendors, he said. This is helping to either side-step supply problems, or address and contain them as fast as circumstances allow.

Even at the end of April when coronavirus outbreaks were severe in Europe and gaining intensity in the US, a majority of blade and nacelle factories around the world were open, said Tom Harries, head of wind research at BloombergNEF.

“There have been some hiccups and temporary closures of factories but largely speaking, the global supply chain has been operating which is good news. Geographical diversification has helped the industry,” he said.

Harries cautioned that while US construction is continuing and most global factories are open, getting components to the country, and then to job sites, still can be troublesome. “That’s where the challenge lies when it comes to the supply chain impact on the wind industry during Covid-19,” he said.

Partly for that reason, BNEF lowered its 2020 US wind installation forecast from 13.5GW in expectation that some projects will get pushed into next year for completion. It anticipates 13.4GW of new capacity in 2021 while WoodMac see 13.9GW.

News from the frontline of development has so far been encouraging, at least as far as the largest project owners are concerned.

In the US, the largest developers such as Avangrid Renewables, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Enel Green Power and NextEra Energy Resources, have reported no significant impacts from Covid-19. They have the size, sophistication and buying power to lock in volume orders and mitigate most supply chain bottlenecks.

They also leverage ready access to capital and ability to use their balance sheets to finance projects and have a track record of executing them that reassures customers, regulators and state officials in the present climate of uncertainty.

Smaller developers have been harder hit, however, with AWEA reporting issues such as availability of capital, financing uncertainty, permitting delays, and transportation and workforce restrictions in certain states.

AWEA estimated that coronavirus impacts have potentially put 25GW in project investments worth $35bn at risk, plus 35,000 of 120,000 industry jobs – although the federal extension announced this week makes that worst-case scenario unlikely.

Wind

Robust and resilient: America's wind industry weathers the Covid storm