Bogdan Tudorache

Romania will install new capacities of wind farms worth just 200 MW between 2019 and 2023, according to a new report of WindEurope, and all of it will be onshore. At the end of 2023, Romania will have a total installed capacity of 3,229 MW in wind farms.

There are, however, a lot of countries with less new projects than Romania installed in the mentioned period. For example, The Czech Republic will install 63 MW, Switzerland- 86 MW, while Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary will have no new parks.

”There is significant uncertainty over how much wind energy capacity will grow in Europe over the next five years,”, says WindEurope’s new Wind Energy Outlook to 2023 study. ”If Governments end up producing clear and ambitious National Energy & Climate Plans (NECPs) and they improve the permitting arrangements for wind farms and they keep investing in new grid capacity, then Europe’s wind energy capacity would grow by 88 GW to 277 GW by 2023. But that’s a big if.

Alternatively, if the NECPs are unambitious and permitting issues persist, then Europe will install much less new wind power: only 67 GW. Permitting issues are already leading to undersubscribed auctions (notably in Germany) and lower installation rates than expected,” say WindEurope officials.

Conversely, if permitting improves significantly and the NECPs are super ambitious, then Europe could install 112 GW over the next five years.

So the annual volumes of new wind capacity up to 2023 could be anything between 13 and 22 GW. This uncertainty weighs heavily on the supply chain and could impact the significant cost reductions achieved in recent years, the study reveals.

Under all the scenarios over three-quarters of the new installations will be onshore wind. Spain, Sweden and Norway are currently leading the growth in onshore wind. Germany is installing much less this year than it traditionally has, and its outlook remains uncertain for the rest of the period, not least given recent policy decisions. We expect France to show continued steady growth in onshore wind.