In a historical record year 2017, which saw installation of more than 4 gigawatts (GW) of new offshore wind power capacity worldwide, European countries kept dominating the market.
At the end of 2017, global cumulative offshore wind capacity reached almost 19GW, a 30% increase from 2016 (Chart).
- Sources: Global Wind Energy Council, Global Wind Report 2017
This growth again mostly took place in Europe, essentially in the United Kingdom (+1.7GW) and Germany (+1.2GW), but also in Belgium (+0.2GW) and Finland (+0.1GW). China also started to demonstrate some significant progress by adding roughly 1.2GW.
On a cumulative basis, the United Kingdom increased its leadership and is now close to have 7GW of offshore wind power capacity installed. And among the top 10 countries, only three were not European countries; China, Vietnam, and Japan – all Asian countries.
