The Evolution of Wind Power in 2016
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2016 Global Wind Power Growth highlights GWEC and Greenbyte data on installed capacity, renewable energy trends, and turbine markets across Asia, Europe, and Latin America, with China, Germany, and USA leading additions in MW.
Key Highlights
An overview of worldwide wind capacity expansion in 2016, using GWEC and Greenbyte data on markets, MW, and growth.
China added 23,328 MW; remains top market with 168,690 MW installed.
Germany passed 50 GW; US and Germany each added about 10% new capacity.
Latin America surged: Brazil +2 GW; Chile and Uruguay grew over 30%.
GWEC and Greenbyte map tracks global capacity growth, 1981 to 2017.
The figures are in and it is safe to say that 2016 was a stellar year for the wind industry, as this record year for renewables analysis highlights. The Evolution of Wind Power is the result from a cooperation between The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and renewable energy software company Greenbyte. The interactive map reveals the cumulative installed capacity per country, continent and the world between 1981-2017. Let’s take a closer look at the figures and see what has happened in the past twelve months.
Last year again, China hit the ground running with 23,328 MW added wind power capacity in 2016. With 168,690 MW installed capacity, China remains the world’s largest regional market for new wind power development.
An Asian newcomer on the map this year is Pakistan which almost doubled its installed wind power capacity in 2016 to 591 MW. Another fast-moving Asian is South Korea – with a 19% increase from last year to 1,031 MW installed wind power capacity the country is now the fourth biggest wind power nation in Asia, and the sector has continued to expand despite Covid-19 impacts in later years.
France had an excellent year in 2015 with 1073 MW installed and still managed to double its growth in 2016 to nearly 12 GW of super-clean wind energy in total, amid rising European wind investment across the region. ~1000 kilometers south of France, South Africa also had wind in its sails last year, reaching 1471 MW of installed capacity, i.e. a 28% increase from 2015.
2016 was also a great year for Latin America; Brazil kept its impressive and steady growth with more than 2 GW installed, totaling 10,740 MW and Chile’s and Uruguay’s respective installed wind power capacity grew more than 30%, as global renewable power was on course to shatter more records overall.
Established wind power nations Germany and USA have kept a steady growth with 10% new capacity added in 2016 respectively, and in the US wind became the most-used renewable source as capacity continued to expand. Notable in 2016, Germany crossed the 50 GW mark in installed wind power capacity.
Other countries that experienced significant growth in installed wind power capacity last year were Chile up 34,5% to 1424 MW, Uruguay up 30% to 1210 MW and Peru up 39% to 241 MW, Turkey up 23% to 6081 MW and Netherlands up 20,5% to 4328 MW.
Greenbyte strives to make renewable energy production more abundant, more efficient and more available for future generations worldwide. We provide a cloud based software platform to developers, owners and operators of wind turbines that give valuable insight to increase power output. Our products are offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that is quick to implement and easy to learn for managers, analysts and technical staff.
