Asian Wind Energy: Efficiency and Cost Reduction in Focus as Players Eye a Post FiT Future

Summary and Conclusion

What's Original?

This insight is an in-depth look into the Asian wind energy industry, covering the value chain and related companies at each key stage of the value chain. Our research includes the following:

Industry Background: This includes an in-depth analysis on the wind energy sector with an overview of wind energy, including the growth of global installed capacity wind energy and analysis of the Asian wind energy market.

We examine both global onshore and offshore wind energy and differences in installation costs, annual investments, levelised cost of electricity (LCoE) and the declining trend in installation costs.

The potential capacity level of offshore wind energy is higher than onshore, though installation costs, O&M and transportation costs are currently higher for offshore which is clearly reflected in the LCoE of the two categories.

When comparing total global wind capacity against the Asian market alone, over the last decade the Asian market’s growth rate was higher than the global rate and 51% of global new capacity additions were made in the Asian region.

The majority of Asian new capacity installed in Asian market was in APAC and China remained the world’s largest onshore market accounting for 37% of total onshore installations in 2019 while in the offshore market China accounted for a slightly more modest 23% of installations, trailing the UK and Germany.

The total installed capacity of onshore wind is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.2% and to reach 1,787 GW globally in 2030 and then 5,044 GW by 2050. Furthermore, Asia (mostly China) should continue to dominate the onshore wind power industry, with more than 50% of global installations by 2050. Offshore wind energy in Asia should grow at a CAGR of 28% during 2018-30 and reach 613 GW while the Asian onshore market is expected to grow at a 13% CAGR and reach 2,646 GW. We examine the leading Asian countries (India, Japan and China) in the sector and their growth potential.

We believe that, over the next decade, the Asian market will outperform in wind energy growth compared to Europe and the US. Further, the trend towards offshore wind energy development in the Asian region will start to gather steam. The growth will be still mainly driven by China, India and Japan, however, apart from those countries South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam also demonstrate some potential to develop wind energy.

Value Chain Analysis: We detail the value chain for wind energy highlighting the critical stages of the value chain (raw material supply, design and development services, component supply, wind turbine manufacturers, construction & installation services and wind farm developers) and the leading players in those stages.

Wind Farm Owners - By the end of 2019, the top 15 wind farm owner-operators held over 1/3 of the total 650 GW of onshore and offshore assets globally. Chinese utilities continue to dominate the top 15 ranking of wind asset owners as China is the leader in the market. We believe that this situation will continue as wind energy installation in China is expected to grow at higher rate than other leading countries in the world.

Original Equipment Manufacturing - OEMs usually manufacture some of the critical components such as the nacelle in-house, and blades and towers are produced either by the OEM or fabricated to the OEM's specifications by a supplier. The tower, gearbox, shafts, bearings, blades, generator, power converter and control systems accounted more than 80% of total costs.

Although most Asian suppliers have historically relied on turbine technologies licensed from Europe to enter the wind industry, the Asia Pacific has now become the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturing hub after a decade of development. In 2019, some 33 wind turbine manufacturers installed an estimated 22,893 wind turbines globally with a combined capacity of 63,076 MW. Of the 33 suppliers, 20 are from APAC.

Further, we have noticed that Chinese and Indian players have maintained their leading market position in the Asian region while international players like Siemens Gamesa and GE were able to obtain market share in the region.

Rotors - Turbine rotor diameters have been getting larger as a result of greater pressure for turbine OEMs to reduce the LCOE by launching new turbines with larger rotors that allow for better capacity factors and an improvement in AEP (Annual Energy Production). China is the key driver behind the trend of larger wind turbine rotors as out of the 6,691 units of 2.0 MW wind turbines installed globally in 2018, nearly 80% are located in China, of which more than half the turbines installed are equipped with rotors that are 120m or larger. We see the trend of building larger and light weight rotors continuing, especially with Asian market started to develop more offshore wind projects.

Blades - Blade core material balsa shortages have prompted turbine OEMs and blade manufacturers to switch to PET and hybrid designs with Balsa and PET. Wood Mackenzie forecasts the share of PET to increase from 20% in 2018 to more than 55% by 2023.

Gearboxes - GWEC predicted that annual global wind gearbox demand is likely to reach 56.4 GW in 2019 and then peak in 2020 at 59.1GW driven by the installation rush in China and the US. Regionally, around 40-48% of total demand is likely to be produced in South East Asia between 2019-2023. Furthermore, around 75 GW of gearbox manufacturing capacity is available globally, thus GWEC does not expect any major bottleneck. Around 70% of the global market share is represented by three main players, Winergy, NGC and ZF. Winergy and NGC have maintained similar levels of wind turbine gear box market share over a decade while ZF was increase its market share by acquiring other leading companies around the globe.

Towers - The tower has low technical requirements compared to other components and is thus usually sourced locally. A considerable percentage of Asian tower manufacturers ship their wind towers to North American and European countries, as production costs are lower in Asian countries and they are able to offer towers at competitive prices. Some players like Suzlon have invented lower cost hybrid tower structures which can be built at much lower cost than traditional designs.

Services & Support Opportunities – Broadly speaking, the services opportunities can be categorised into: Project development Geotechnical services Logistics support for wind farm Construction opportunities Operations and maintenance. These service providing companies generate higher margins compared to OEMs and wind turbine manufactures and as with solar power, we see a trend for OEM and component manufactures to expand services segments by introducing new technological innovation.