Chart: Which countries added the most new wind power in 2022?

Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.

The world added nearly 78,000 megawatts of wind power projects in 2022, marking the industry’s third-best year for new capacity — but representing a sizable drop from the previous year’s installations, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). Supply-chain constraints, inflation and market uncertainty contributed to the nearly 17 percent decline in capacity additions last year compared to 2021’s results.

Still, despite what the council dubbed a “disappointing year” for wind power, the industry managed to grow the world’s cumulative installed capacity by 9 percent, to 906,000 megawatts (or 906 gigawatts).

Onshore projects accounted for the vast majority of new wind capacity last year, with 68.8 gigawatts connected to power grids worldwide, GWEC said in its annual report. That’s a 5.1 percent drop from new installations in 2021.

China accounted for nearly half of last year’s additions, and European countries supplied about a quarter. Both regions added more wind power in 2022 than they did in 2021. Meanwhile, the United States saw a 32 percent drop in year-over-year capacity additions, due in part to supply-chain constraints and grid interconnection issues.

Such challenges threaten to slow progress around the world, according to GWEC CEO Ben Backwell. “Policymakers need to act decisively to fix market and regulatory barriers to allow investment to flow into new [wind turbine] factories to avoid future bottlenecks,” he said in a Monday statement.