🌪️ A tripling of renewables by 2030 demands 3x #OnshoreWind and 6x #OffshoreWind – but 2024 brought significant barriers to scaling up. Ben Backwell, CEO of Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and incoming Chair of GRA, highlights the Great Wind RE-Set as the strategy to overcome these challenges and unlock renewables' full potential in 2025 ⤵️
CEO at Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), scaling up the wind industry as a key climate solution.
As we wind up 2024, it's fair to say that the 12 months following the historic COP28 UAE have been challenging, with the wind sector suffering economic headwinds, and increased political uncertainty across much of the world. Through all this, however, the wind industry can feel proud of its achievements, having recalibrated projects and business models, focused on growth opportunities and adapted the best it can to fast changing circumstances. Here at Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), we continued to build support for wind among policy-makers, investors and stakeholders across the world, providing essential thought leadership for the industry, convening action-orientated discussions, and building the policy and social support which our industry relies on. For me personally, the year has seen a number of important moments, including: ✔️ Completing the full set-up and funding of two key initiatives which will help create mid term growth for the industry: Ocean Energy Pathway and the Global Offshore Wind Alliance (GOWA) ✔️ Building the Global Renewables Alliance (GRA) along with our fellow renewable energy industries and maintaining crucial visibility and momentum for the sector - even in the cold winds of COP29 Baku ✔️ Organising and co-organising high profile events with policy makers, from the Brazil Offshore Wind Summit, to WindEnergy Hamburg to Brazil Wind Power, China Wind Power, the Global Renewables Summit in New York and the APAC Wind Summit in South Korea ✔️ Seeing progress on regulation across a number of priority markets , from Vietnam and South Korea to Brazil, which capped the year by passing the Offshore Wind Law in December. The industry continues to grow and is still on track to double its installed capacity by the end of 2030. However, to place wind on the more accelerated pathway that is needed for it to play its necessary part in the push to Triple Renewables by 2030, there are a series of policy and industry barriers which we will need to navigate and overcome. For this reason, we launched the concept of the 🟢 Great Wind RE-Set at COP29 Azerbaijan, following a period of intense engagement with industry and experts. The RE-Set aims to provide the strategic direction and vision which will allow the sector to re-focus, adopt a common vision to take necessary measures to achieve a healthy industry and ensure that its asks to government and society are effective. The RE-set will be the basis for GWEC’s work in 2025, with a series of high-level activities planned to gain support for the idea and turn it into an action program. At the same time we will be working towards re-establishing necessary political ambition as I take over the Chair of GRA and we head towards COP30 in Brazil. We won't be able to do any of this without the continued support of our amazing members and partners. So I'm looking forward to working with all of you in what will no doubt be an exciting 2025. From all of us at GWEC - Happy New Year!
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