Asia wind energy market is almost dead, China market seen to shrink

The Asian market for wind energy is disappointing with main drivers China and India seen to post barely flat growth in terms of annual installed capacity, says an expert.

In an exclusive interview, general manager of HK-based consultancy firm Wind Prospect Alexander Tancock said that market for wind energy is “quite disappointing” with Vietnam only poised to report significant growth only because it comes from a very low base.

“If you look in Asia, basically China being the dominant market in the region, they’ll probably have less installed capacity this year than in 2010. So although wind turbine market in China is very huge, it’s actually gonna shrink in terms of new installations. Last year they had 19GW, this year most people thinks that its gonna drop between 15-17GW,” Mr. Tancock, who spoke earlier at the Clean Energy Expo Asia 2011, said.

Investment prospect for India which is the second largest wind market in the region is also dim with Mr. Tancock expecting it to remain having installed capacity of around 2-3GW every year and guess what he says to other countries in the region?

“If you look at the other countries in Asia, basically not much is happening. India is still there, doing around 2-3GW every year and the other markets are disappointing. Thailand, they promised a lot of things but nothing has happened. Malaysia is not doing wind. Phillipines has announced feed-in-tariffs but no one exactly knows what’s gonna happen. I suspect not much will happen,” he said.

“I think Asia is really very disappointing and it is basically just about China and India but those markets are really flat. They’re not gonna grow in terms of annual installation not even in the long run,” he added.

For investors who still want to tap the Asian Market despite the gloomy outlook, Mr. Tancock said that they might want to consider Vietnam.

“If I have to pick up a country, Vietnam has a promise because Vietnam actually has quite a good wind speed. Vietnam is actually the most promising country in Asia but that is because it come from a low base of less than 1GW. It could be an interesting market of probably a couple of 100 megawatt a year and like that but again it’s not huge compared to China and India,” he said.