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Last Updated on: 25th June 2025, 01:02 pm

The global offshore wind market is heading for another boom year in 2025, though industry insiders advise that it won’t be quite as boomy as in the past. Blame the US, which is failing to flex its considerable offshore muscles despite the luxury of vast, sprawling coastlines at its disposal along with huge energy-hungry coastal populations. Still, the long term outlook is rosier. After all, US presidents come and go, but wind is forever.

The US Is Dragging Down The Global Offshore Wind Market

On the bright side, the global offshore wind industry added an impressive 8 gigawatts of installed capacity in 2024, the fourth-highest amount on record.

“This brings total installed offshore wind capacity globally to 83 GW – enough to power 73 million households,” notes the Global Wind Energy Council in a newly released report, “Global Offshore Wind Report.”

While the global wind industry did not set a new record for installed capacity last year, it did set a new record for the capacity of offshore wind farms still under construction, to the tune of 48 gigawatts. In addition, various governments collectively set a record for new offshore lease auctions in 2024, at 56 gigawatts.

So much for the good news. “However, despite the strong pipeline, the report shows that macroeconomic headwinds, failed auctions, supply chain constraints and increasing policy instability, particularly in the US, have contributed to a downgrading of GWEC’s short term outlook,” the organization advises.

“Of course, the sector has faced challenges, and in particularly policy instability in the US has had a significant impact, as well as failed auctions in mature markets,” notes GWEC Deputy CEO Rebecca Williams, referring to hiccups in the UK and Denmark offshore auctions last year in addition to the abrupt shift in US energy policy this year.

The Global Offshore Wind Industry Forges Ahead, Without The US

“GWEC’s short-term outlook is 24% lower than the previous year’s forecast due to a negative policy environment in the US and auction failures in the UK and Denmark,” GWEC emphasized in a press statement, again pointing the finger at the US.

As well they should. Why is the US holding back when it measures its offshore wind potential in terawatts, not mere gigawatts? How should I know? Ask a Republican!

The numbers don’t lie. “Fixed-bottom and floating offshore wind energy technology could provide terawatts of power to the United States’ grid,” the National Renewable Energy Laboratory reminded everyone earlier this year, in an updated assessment.

According to NREL’s calculations, the technical potential for conventional fixed-bottom wind turbines stands at 1.5 terawatts, with another 2.5 terawatts coming from the relatively new field of floating offshore wind.

Too bad all that potential will go to waste, at least for the time being. With the US out of the picture, GWEC anticipates that other established markets — namely, Europe and China — will account for most of the industry’s near-term growth.

GWEC also takes note of rising activity in the relatively new markets of the Asia-Pacific and Latin America. The organization also lists eight promising additional hotspots — Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, Brazil, and Colombia — where governments are working with industry to fast-track offshore projects.

Woe is us! While all this activity is happening all over the world, US President Donald Trump summarily dumped almost the entire US offshore wind industry down the drain upon taking office. In addition to ripping up a whole stack of settled offshore leases and revoking a “final” permit for one project that was ready to begin construction, the President also threatened to stop another project in mid-construction. That threat turned out to be an empty one, but the damage has been done.

Even without the US, GWEC expects that annual growth rates will continue to hit 28% in the near term before hitting 15% between 20230 and 2034. In terms of installed capacity, that means the global wind industry will “sail past the milestones of 30GW annually in 2030 and 50 GW by 2033,” GWEC summarizes.

Thousands Of US Jobs Evaporate: #ThanksTrump

When Trump cut his own country off from terawatts of clean kilowatts, he did quite a bit of damage to the clean energy movement. However, that’s not all he did. He also stomped out thousands of portside and at-sea jobs in coastal communities, and that’s just the tip of the employment iceberg. Trump also tossed out thousands of manufacturing jobs in the domestic offshore wind supply chain, with red and blue states alike feeling the hurt.

The US trade organization Oceantic Network tried to warn Trump after he won the hearts and minds of the US electorate last November. In a press statement, Oceantic President and CEO Liz Burdock noted that the US offshore wind lease program — which launched in force during Trump’s first term in office — has generated $40 billion in new investment, of which $24 billion has gone into manufacturing, vessel building, and related activities across 39 states.

For the record, Oceantic counts more than 450 supply chain stakeholders in its membership list.

Oh, well. That’s all water under the bridge. If the US keeps sitting this one out, supply chain stakeholders all over the world are eager to make bank off the global offshore wind industry. “We believe that to fully unlock the large-scale deployment potential of offshore wind, global supply chain collaboration is crucial,” noted Mingyang Smart Energy President and CTO Mr. Zhang Qiying, in a statement supporting the new GWEC report.

What’s Next For The US Offshore Wind Industry

If Mingyang Smart Energy rings a bell, you may be thinking of a design for a new offshore turbine foundation the company introduced back in 2022. Their jacket-type foundation is more elaborate than the simple monopile foundations typically used in offshore wind farms, but it does enable an aquaculture operation to piggyback on the structure.

“This typhoon-resistant structure includes an intelligent aquaculture system with remote functions, such as automated feeding, monitoring, detection, and collection,” Minyang explained, anticipating that a single jacket could host up to 150,000 fish.

It’s not just Minyang. The idea of dual-or even multi-purposing wind turbine foundations is catching hold as developers seek additional value streams. Other examples include the placement of floating solar panels and wave energy devices between the turbines. Green hydrogen is another option, with electrolyzers attached onto individual turbine foundations or floating within a turbine array on their own platform.

Circling back to the food-water-energy nexus, keep an eye on Sweden, where a plan is afoot to host an aquaculture operation among the floating wind turbines of the proposed Mareld wind farm in the North Sea.

The US consumes a lot of seafood and it sure would be nice to explore new opportunities for the domestic fish farm industry to expand and, you know, create more jobs. Just saying.

Photo (cropped): The US offshore wind industry has been forced to wave buh-bye from shore as the global wind industry moves on to pursue new clean energy opportunities (courtesy of US Department of Energy).