A record-setting 5GW of offshore wind was wired-in globally in 2018 taking total installed capacity to over 22GW, according to new figures from advocacy body World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO).

The organisation, launched in December, published the statistics at its first Global Offshore Wind Summit, being held in Tapei, Taiwan, as part of a newly-minted ‘open source’ database.

“We are providing unlimited access to [this] detailed database containing all relevant facts and figures on all global offshore wind farms,” said WFO chief executive Gunnar Herzig. “WFO encourages the global offshore wind community to review the data, and to provide feedback on the figures or suggest changes.

“We will keep the entire database updated, and are convinced that this open source approach is going to benefit the entire offshore wind industry.”

WFO, which counts developers E.ON, Northland Power and Innogy among its founding members, marked its first event by announcing its ‘500 by 50’ mission to help drive the offshore wind sector to 500GW by 2050.

“WFO wants to pave the way to utilise the industry’s potential to build an additional 500GW of offshore wind capacity by the year 2050…based on the latest projection by the International Renewable Energy Agency’s (Irena's) transformation roadmap,” added Herzig.

Irena forecasts point to 520GW of offshore wind being online by 2050 but cautions that “detailed global standards” are needed for this build-out to be viable.

Currently, the UK and Germany account for over 85% of global grid-connected offshore wind capacity. However, a recent report from consultancy Wood Mackenzie suggests Europe’s slice of a market that is expected to witness near six-fold growth by 2027 to reach 120GW could narrow to under 60% as Asian and the US take off.

Wind

Wind industry sees record offshore build as fleet tops 22GW