According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), global wind turbines installations remained above 50 GW in 2017 at 52,573 MW, down by 3.7% compared with the 54,640 GW added in 2016. The global installed wind capacity thus rose to nearly 540 GW at the end of December 2017.
The main driver behind the figure were Asian countries, with more than 24 GW of new capacity: China added 19.5 GW of new capacity, while India added 4.15 GW. In Europe, more than 16.8 GW of new capacities were added: Germany and the United Kingdom accounted for most of the new capacities with 6.6 GW and 4.3 GW, respectively, followed by France with nearly 1.7 GW and Turkey with 766 MW. More than 7 GW were installed in the United States, over 2 GW were added in Brazil and more than 620 MW were added in South Africa. More than 4.3 GW of new offshore wind capacity was added in 2017, mainly in the United Kingdom (+1.7 GW to 6.8 GW), Germany (+1.2 GW to 5.3 GW), China (+1.2 GW to 2.8 GW) and Belgium (+165 MW to 877 MW). Global offshore wind capacity rose to 18.8 GW in 2017.
According to the GWEC, China now accounts for 35% of the world's wind capacity with more than 188 GW, followed by the United States (89 GW or 17%), Germany (56 GW, 10%), India (33 GW, 6%) and Spain (23 GW, 4%).
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