Global Wind Report 2021 by GWEC: Key details, India's role and other aspects

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Global Wind Report 2021 highlights wind power’s role on the road to net zero.It has been released ahead of COP 26 to be held in November 2021. 

Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC): 

The Global Wind Energy Council, GWEC was established in 2005. It provides credible and representative form for the complete wind energy industry on an international scale.

It's headquarters are located in Belgium.

Global Wind Report 2021 : Details

The report has revealed the following important details:

1. 2020 was the best year in history for the global wind industry.
2. The report has been published by Global Wind Energy Council on March 25, 2021
3. The global wind power market has nearly quadrupled in size over the past decade 
4. The report also warns that in order to achieve the global climate goals and limit global warming to below 2 degrees, it would be important to increase the speed of new wind power installations.
5. Power-to-X is set to become one of the breakthrough solutions which will dispatch green power to different end-use sectors to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels from heating to manufacturing.
6. The new installations would be before the next decade and would be three times higher then the pre- industrial levels.
7. By 2020, almost 93 GW of the new capacity would be installed 
8. The 93 GW of new installations has brought global cumulative wind power capacity up to 743 GW. 
9. The above mentioned amount of energy produced can reduce 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 annually
10. As compared to earlier records the global wind power has seen a rise of four times in the year 2020. 
11. China and the US remained the world’s largest markets for new onshore additions,and the world’s two major
12. The report also informs that the economies together increased their market share by 15 percent to 76%, driven by the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) cut-off in China and the scheduled phase-out of the full-rate Production Tax Credit (PTC) in the USA
13. On the regional level, 2020 was also a record year for onshore installations in Asia Pacific. .
14. The world needs to install a minimum of 180 GW of new wind energy to limit global warming.
15. The net emission target has to be met by 2050.
16. The governments must be working their heads off keeping in kind the climate emergency we are in. 
17. Grid infrastructures need to be scaled up a notch.
18. All regions increased new installations, except Europe and Africa & Middle East

India's and wind energy:

1. Indian Government is reportedly lagging behind in its 2022 wind capacity target. 
2. Multiple issues are there challenging the Central Government's ambitious capacity target in the sector of wind
3. The centre has a new renewable energy target of 175 GW by 2022 which also includes the 60 GW onshore wind energy. 
4. Till now 39 GW of wind energy has been installed. 
5. Only 1 gigawatt of the onshore wind projects in 2020 as per Bloomberg NEF have been installed in India recently. India's top suppliers 2020 report attributed the slow growth to the pandemic. 
6. The major producers of wind energy in India have been Renew Power, Sembcorp Green Infra, Alfanar and Adani Green Energy. The independent power producers commissioned the projects worth 883 megawatt in Gujarat which is equivalent to 79 percent of the wind energy capacity of the country. 

As per the report, “ Power-to-X is a promising and innovative storage solution for wind for a myriad of uses. Stored electricity can be electrolysed into hydrogen to be used as feedstock, to produce bulk chemicals like methanol or ammonia for industrial processes) or combined with captured CO2 to make carbon neutral liquid fuels such as crude, gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels (Power-to-Liquid Fuels). Stored green power can generate heat through pumps or electric boilers for houses and factories (Power-to-Heat), or contained in underground formations such as salt domes and fed back to the gas grid or transformed into electricity when needed. 

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