China accounted for half of all new global offshore wind capacity in 2020.

That’s according to a new report by GWEC Market Intelligence, which suggests the country installed more than 3GW of new capacity.

The analysis highlights the global offshore wind industry had its second-best year ever in 2020, installing more than 6GW of new capacity, despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the energy sector.

Total global offshore wind capacity currently stands at 35GW, which will help to avoid 62.5 million tonnes of emissions over the projects’ lifetime.

That translates to moving more than 20 million cars off the road and creating around 700,000 jobs globally during the same timeframe.

The figures also show the UK remains in the top spot globally for total offshore wind capacity, with China overtaking Germany to become the world’s second-largest offshore wind market.

Feng Zhao, Head of Market Intelligence and Strategy at GWEC, commented: “The continued growth of the offshore wind industry globally throughout the pandemic is a testament to the resilience of this booming industry.

“Although China was hit first by the COVID-19 crisis, the impacts on the offshore wind sector were minimal, resuming business-as-usual as early as March 2020.

“China’s record-breaking growth is expected to continue in 2021, driven by an offshore wind installation rush to meet China’s Feed-in-Tariff deadline by the end of this year”.