Offshore Wind Worldwide 2022 edition - Flipbook - Page 6
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Hogan Lovells
Foreword
As the World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO)
we are delighted to see the publication of the
third edition of the Offshore Wind
Worldwide handbook by our WFO member
Hogan Lovells. The first two editions of this
handbook have been excellent guides for
anyone interested in navigating the complex
regulatory landscape of the global offshore
wind industry.
This third edition of the handbook is
published at a point in time at which the
need for regulatory guidance could hardly be
more urgent. In 2021 the global offshore
wind industry has seen an unprecedented
growth of more than 15 GW of newly
installed capacity. More than 80% of this
total capacity were installed in China alone.
The main driver behind this phenomenal
growth in China was a change in China’s
regulatory framework for offshore wind,
namely the expiration of the federal feed-in
tariff by the end of 2021. As only projects
fully commissioned by December 31st were
eligible for the feed-in tariff, Chinese
developers rushed to complete their projects
before the end of last year.
The result is hugely impressive. China is now
by far the world’s largest offshore wind
market with an installed capacity of nearly
20 GW which is almost exactly as much as
the installed capacities in the UK (12.3 GW)
and Germany (7.7 GW) combined. China’s
massive growth in 2021 clearly underlines
the paramount importance of regulatory
frameworks for the offshore wind industry as
well as the enormous consequences that any
changes to existing regulatory frameworks
can have.
2021 also clearly demonstrated the
increasing globalisation of the offshore wind
industry. Several new and emerging offshore
wind markets such as Japan, France, Italy, or
Norway started construction works for their
first large-scale projects, thus moving from
the demonstration phase into the maturity
phase of offshore wind power generation.
More and more countries around the world
have furthermore implemented their first
basic regulatory frameworks for offshore
wind. Markets like Australia and Brazil are
therefore now on everyone’s list of countries
to watch for the next important regulatory