The UK led a European wind turbine order boom last year as giant offshore projects being built in the North Sea sent sales soaring by 74%, latest data from industry group WindEurope shows.

European projects ordered a record 14.6GW of turbines across 19 nations in 2020, with onshore sales up 13% to 8.2GW but offshore surging sixfold to 6.4GW compared to 2019’s level.

The bonanza in the midst of the Covid pandemic was led by the UK, which ordered 4.4GW of the total, all but about 800MW of that for offshore deployment.

Developers are currently building the world’s largest offshore wind farms in the UK North Sea, including the 3.6GW multi-stage Dogger Bank being advanced by Equinor and SSE, which will use GE Renewable Energy’s 13MW Haliade-X for its first two phases.

The Netherlands was the second-largest source of European orders last year with 2.4GW, with Sweden third at 1.4GW. Sweden was also the number one in onshore wind orders.

WindEurope, which featured the data in its annual order monitor, added: “France and Germany are the other countries to have ordered a significant amount of offshore turbines but stalling wind energy expansion in both countries led to lower orders than in previous years.”

WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson in a Recharge article this week said the wind industry still faces serious challenges in key markets, particularly over issues such as permitting.

Wind

UK leads 2020 European wind turbine boom as orders hit record high