Offshore wind is growing — except in North America
Data DiveAsia and Europe each have well over 200 times more offshore wind power than North America, according to a recent report by the Global Wind Energy Council.
North America represented just 0.2% of total offshore wind installations at the end of 2024, according to the report. Those installations are entirely concentrated in the United States, where total capacity stands at just 174 megawatts (MW).
Those numbers pale in comparison to the 46.3 gigawatts (GW) of total offshore wind capacity in Asia — 90% of which is in China — and the 36.7 GW in Europe.
The divide predates Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House, but the numbers feel emblematic of this moment. While the U.S. is doubling down on fossil fuels and its president is disparaging many clean energy technologies (especially wind), China and European nations are leaning into renewables in the name of energy independence.
European nations want to shed their dependency on Russian energy, while China has long invested in renewables to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels.
The global offshore wind market has been growing by 10% on average each year over the past decade, with total installations of 83.2 GW. That represents 7.3% of total global wind capacity at the end of 2024, the report said.
China continues to be “the absolute market leader for cumulative installations,” the report explains, with the Asian powerhouse accounting for more than half of global market share. The United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Taiwan rounded out the top five. Notably, offshore wind pioneer Denmark dropped out of that top tier for the first time due to developers’ lack of appetite to build amid high costs and uncertain returns, the report notes.
North America’s dismal offshore wind capacity reflects the wider challenges the technology is facing.
In the U.S., inflation, increased capital costs and supply chain constraints have hampered the sector and led to many projects being canceled in 2023 and 2024.
These economic headwinds became the “perfect storm” for the industry, the report states, before Trump entered the White House. The president has repeated misinformation about wind technology and halted all new permitting for offshore wind projects when he took office.
Offshore wind faces challenges in other parts of the world, as well, such as mis- and disinformation campaigns that have been increasingly dogging the wind sector in Europe, as Cipher recently reported.