How did we do in our 2022 predictions?

In the first week of 2022, we shared 10 predictions for what would happen in wind globally this year. Now we’re back to see what we got right and wrong...

1. Firms feel the greenflation pinch: Vestas and Siemens Gamesa kicked off 2022 with warnings about the impacts of inflation on companies in the wind sector, and this has continued throughout the year – worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Manufacturers are restructuring, notably GE and Siemens, while developers and asset managers are feeling the pinch too. This will continue to be a big focus in 2023. One point. 1

2. Covid-19 disruption to continue: This is a tricky one to quantify. While the wind energy supply chain has continued to face disruption due to the knock-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have not seen the scale of problems we expected. New variants have not been as deadly and travel has been less affected too. However, investor interest has stayed high. For that reason, and the supply chain issues, we will claim half a point. 0.5

3. Germany takes centre stage in Europe: After a quiet few years, we said the new coalition government in Germany would ramp up the country’s targets for wind installations and indeed it did – although this was partly due to the need for more energy security after the war in Ukraine. We also predicted there would be tougher targets in Spain, we have seen despite the failure of the recent renewables tender. Would this have happened without Putin’s war? Yes, but that gave more urgency. 1

4. Auction fever in the UK again: We said the UK would be a “good litmus test” for interest in European offshore wind, and the ScotWind tender did just that. It also gave great insights about the progress being made on the commercialisation of floating wind technology. Meanwhile, the febrile nature of UK politics has exposed government rifts on the direction of energy policy, but belated support for onshore wind suggests we might finally see more support there. One point. 1

5. US wind will enjoy a record year: It has been a cliched ‘year of two halves’ in US wind. The first half was going largely as we predicted: momentum for offshore wind, few answers on transmission, and a tailwind for renewables of having President Biden in the White House. This accelerated after summer as the Biden administration was able to deliver on the promises of its Build Back Better bill in the Inflation Reduction Act. We said he and his administration would keep struggling to deliver on his green promises, but the IRA shows he is winning. 1

6. Mingyang and Goldwind attract attention: We predicted Chinese turbine makers Mingyang and Goldwind would make bigger waves in Europe and Asia in 2022, with a “few eye-catching deals from both”. Mingyang has been delivering with some significant deals in European offshore wind, and it has been earmarked as a potential big winner as European turbine makers struggle. Meanwhile, Goldwind picked up a 500MW deal in Uzbekistan that it said was a milestone for the overseas expansion of the Chinese wind industry. We see more to come from both, but the prediction looks a good one. 1

7. Green hydrogen meets reality: There has been a lot of excitement about the potential of green hydrogen in recent years, but we said we would start to get a better idea in 2022 of the sector’s long-term potential. So, have we got that? The jury's out. We’re seeing plenty of new projects and policy support, while investors are getting a better idea of how to deal with the challenges that face green hydrogen including technical, financial and political. At Tamarindo, we are working to tackle these with our Power-to-X Leadership Council, but there is still a long way to go. We’ll discuss this more throughout 2023. 0.5

8. More high-profile cyberattacks: Vestas, Invenergy and CS Energy were all hit by cyberattacks in 2021, and we predicted more attacks on big names this year. The most high-profile this year was on German turbine maker Nordex on 31st March, which forced it to delay the publication of its first-quarter financial results, and we have also seen attacks on firms including Sembcorp Marine. Is this enough to claim the whole point? We're not convinced. Half a point feels fair. 0.5

9. Corporates plan for green heat and electric vehicles: We took one further diversion away from wind for this prediction as corporates emphasised how wind was just one part of their sustainability plans. That has happened. That said, we haven’t seen corporates making a big deal about pairing renewables generation with plans for electric vehicles and green heat. Some are working with developers to build their own wind farms, but this hasn’t been as exciting this year as we’d hoped. 0.5

10. Finland, South Africa and Vietnam all excite: Picking renewables markets to watch is a tough job, but we have seen good progress on wind in two of the above: Finland and Vietnam. In South Africa, wind was overlooked in the government's recent renewables tender, which has dampened the interest we see from investors and developers.
    
    Outside those, we predicted interest in Colombian onshore wind and saw 369MW deals for Nordex from Celsia; in Kazakhstan, where we have seen big deals (as well as in neighbouring Uzbekistan); and good momentum on offshore wind in Australia and Italy. It’s a tough one to mark. Wind is such a global market that there will always be an element of ‘hit and hope’. We'll knock off a quarter point for South Africa. 0.75

On that basis we’d rank ourselves 7.75/10 for our predictions this year and, for once, we can’t see any that were completely off the mark. Feel free to tell us if you think we're being too generous with ourselves. Happy holidays!

We’ll be back with our 2023 predictions in the first week of January.