Innovation and advancements in cost-out measures continue to have a positive impact on the global offshore wind power sector. As traditional global onshore markets are challenged by policy transitions and saturation of developable resources, the offshore sector represents an important area of growth particularly in carbon-intensive markets.
Much of the momentum in the offshore sector is concentrated in leading countries of Northern Europe, but as offshore wind costs fall, government appetites for procurement and policy support are increasing globally.
MAKE upgrades its global 10-year outlook in Q4 by less than 1%, with a 5GW+ upgrade in the offshore sector more than off-setting downgrades to the onshore sector in markets such as the US, Australia and the Philippines. The upgrade in the offshore sector, however, will not impact the global outlook until 2020 and beyond, due to the longer development cycle in offshore and a dependence in part on expected technology gains. MAKE downgrades the 2017 to 2019 global outlook by 1.3GW, but the 2020+ global outlook is upgraded by more than 4GW. This results in a 10-year compounded annual global growth rate of 3.8%.
