The European Union and the UK are not on track to meet their 2030 offshore wind targets.
At the same time, Chinese wind-turbine manufacturers – who account for more than half of global wind-turbine capacity – are looking to grow their footprint in the European market, where their presence is currently tiny.
To some, the solution seems clear: allowing Chinese manufacturers to invest in Europe could boost competition, alleviate supply chain bottlenecks and lower costs – not to mention bring climate targets within reach.
But the possibility of a growing role for Chinese wind-turbine manufacturers in the European market has sparked heated debate among European policymakers and industry participants.
In 2024, three of China’s top wind-turbine companies accounted for less than 1% of Europe’s installed wind capacity.
But their focus is increasingly shifting to the continent, which some are concerned could hollow out the one clean-energy industry in which Europe is still competitive.
Competition between European and Chinese manufacturers would be “unfair”, according to critics, because the discounts Chinese firms are offering seem to be at least in part due to state subsidies.
In a recent report published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, we explore whether Chinese wind turbine companies are competitive in Europe and the real risks and benefits of Chinese participation in European offshore wind markets.
Our findings build on interviews with policymakers and industry experts, who have been granted anonymity to allow for candid discussion.
Cost advantages are less clear-cut than they appear
China ranks first for many of the global statistics for offshore wind. It has been by far the largest offshore wind market in the world for several years running.
China had 47 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind installed, as of September 2025, more than all other countries combined. Furthermore, China also dominates several key fields critical to offshore wind globally, ranging from permanent magnets to offshore installation vessels.
This stands in firm contrast to Europe – where offshore development has experienced several years of slow growth – and the US, which faces an almost complete halt in new development under the Trump administration.
As happened before in solar and batteries, China’s offshore wind industry scale-up has brought about stunning declines in installation costs.
However, this cost advantage is not as straightforward as these headline numbers would suggest. Despite the vast difference in capacity cost, the electricity produced by Chinese offshore wind farms is only 30% cheaper.
A key reason for this is the lower overall capacity factor of China’s offshore wind sector, referring to the actual output of windfarms in China, compared to their maximum possible output. This can be partly explained by lower wind speeds at China’s offshore sites, but could also relate to lower performance of Chinese turbines, as well as power transmission issues.
Lower production costs in China also would not necessarily translate to the European market, as Chinese cost advantages would be partly offset by transport costs, as well as higher insurance and financing premiums.
Greater localisation of turbine production could mitigate against some of these premiums, but would be offset by higher input costs in Europe.
Nonetheless, as more European governments add local content requirements, Chinese manufacturers have announced plans to set up European factories for turbine blades and towers, with core components shipped from China.
These factories could also be costlier to finance than those back home if financing for investments also comes from Europe, further reducing the cost advantage enjoyed by China’s domestic offshore-energy infrastructure.
Issues beyond costs and bottlenecks
European offshore wind development plans have faced a number of hurdles, including rising costs, slow permitting processes, inefficient auction designs, lengthy grid connection times and limited availability of parts, port capacity and installation vessels.
The small number of players in Europe’s offshore wind sector is seen as part of the problem, according to our interviews.
Currently, there are only three major wind turbine manufacturers in the European offshore wind market: Vestas, Siemens Gamesa and GE Vernova.
The latter announced in 2024 that it is downsizing its offshore wind business and has not taken new offshore orders, although it remains active in onshore wind projects. This reduces competition and could hinder efforts to bring down the cost of offshore wind projects.
Bottlenecks, inadequate industry capacity and lack of competition cannot in themselves explain the current European predicament. Developers we interviewed also note that offshore wind auctions with price caps and stringent contractual terms, designed with an expectation of falling costs, have also been part of the problem.
When these auctions have failed – as in the UK in 2023 and Germany in 2025 – this led to capacity contraction, higher costs and industry consolidation, which have only made it more difficult to reach policy targets, according to a report by European offshore wind company Ørsted.
Even with improved European auction design, it may take years for Europe’s offshore wind installation numbers to recover. With or without Chinese participation, it will also take time to build domestic manufacturing bases and installation vessels.
Pathways to Chinese involvement
Meanwhile, Chinese developers benefit from a large and growing domestic market in China. At the same time, however, intense competition on price and quality is spurring them to seek opportunities overseas.
Throughout Europe’s supply chain, Chinese components and services are already helping alleviate shortages and bottlenecks.
Still, our report found there are divergent views on whether a greater Chinese presence in Europe’s wind markets represents a threat or an opportunity – or both.
Policymakers are expected to continue to emphasise concerns about technology dependence and cybersecurity risks, leading to more domestic content requirements and increased scrutiny of Chinese deals.
The case of the 300 megawatt (MW) Luxcara project in Germany highlights the difficulties for Chinese market entry. Chinese manufacturer Mingyang was initially selected by the project owner in 2024, but was later replaced by Siemens-Gamesa, reportedly due to concerns about security and political risks.
The recent announcement of a deal between the UK’s Octopus Energy and Mingyang may illustrate an emerging model. According to Octopus, Mingyang will supply the physical equipment, while Octopus will supply the software and manage the turbines.
Mingyang will still need access to operational data to support ongoing maintenance, but this can be provided periodically by Octopus without compromising security, the energy company told us.
Meanwhile, following policy signals such as the EU’s new pricing mechanism for electric vehicle imports from China, it seems likely that policymakers will continue to encourage Chinese players to establish production bases in Europe and to require technology licensing or technology transfer in exchange for market access. This would amount to applying the Chinese industrial development model in Europe.
This could allow for technological learning in Europe. In China, the largest players have deployed advanced automated manufacturing lines, including robotic blade bonding, modular stator assembly and real-time quality monitoring – although this may have implications for job creation, a stated aim in Europe’s clean-energy policy.
Despite pointing to some advantages, our interviews suggest that Chinese participation in Europe’s offshore wind market is not a panacea.
Its low costs are unlikely to be transferrable to the European context. But greater Chinese participation in auctions and in manufacturing, with local content requirements and other guardrails, could help spur competition in Europe.
At the same time, our report suggests that the focus on China distracts from deeper issues. Without a growing domestic market, it may be difficult for European players to reduce manufacturing costs and upgrade production, with or without Chinese partners.
Ultimately, industry participants tell us that the greatest determinant of success in Europe’s offshore wind market will be consistent policy support, rather than a decision to allow – or to block – Chinese participation.
The post Experts: Will Chinese wind power help or hinder Europe’s climate goals? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: Will Chinese wind power help or hinder Europe’s climate goals?
A formal petition to the U.S. government calls for sanctions on Chinese seafood imports as it highlights China’s loophole-ridden illegal shark fin trade.
For migrant workers trapped onboard Chinese distant water fishing fleets, cutting the fins off sharks as they writhe violently on rusted decks in the Indian Ocean isn’t accidental. It’s an intentional and lucrative act that marks the start of a bloody half-a-billion-dollar offshore supply chain, tacitly supported by Beijing yet covertly concealed from port inspectors globally.
New data on international climate finance for 2023 and 2024 suggests that wealthy countries are highly unlikely to have met their pledge to double funding for adaptation in developing nations to around $40 billion a year by 2025 amid cuts to their overseas aid budgets.
At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, all countries agreed to “urge” developed nations to at least double their funding for adaptation in developing countries from 2019 levels of around $20 billion by 2025. Funding for adaptation has lagged behind money to help reduce emissions and remains the dark spot even as the data showed overall climate finance rose to a record $136.7 billion in 2024.
A United Nations Environment Programme report warned last year that wealthy nations were likely to miss the adaptation finance target and the data released on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that in 2024 adaptation finance was just under $35 billion.
The OECD, an intergovernmental policy forum for wealthy countries, said the increase between 2022 and 2024 was “modest”, adding that meeting the doubling target would require “strong growth” of close to 20% in 2025.
More cuts likely
The OECD’s figures do not go up to 2025, but several nations announced cuts to climate finance last year. The most notable was the abandonment of US pledges to international climate funds by the new Trump administration but the UK, France, Germany and other wealthy European countries also pared back their contributions.
Joe Thwaites, international finance director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said developed countries were “not on track” to meet the adaptation funding goal.
Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said adaptation finance is needed to expand flood defences, drought-resistant crops, early warning systems and resilient health services as the world warms, bringing more extreme weather and rising seas. “When that money fails to arrive, people lose homes, harvests and livelihoods – and in the worst cases, their lives,” he warned.
Imane Saidi, a senior researcher at the North Africa-based Imal Initiative, called the $35 billion in adaptation finance in 2024 “a drop in the ocean”, considering that the United Nations estimates the annual adaptation needs of developing countries at between $215 billion and $387 billion.
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UN General Assembly backs “climate obligations” set by world’s top court
A UN resolution endorses a landmark climate ruling by the International Court of Justice that states should reduce fossil fuels and repair the damage from global warming -
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If confirmed, a failure to meet the goal is likely to further strain relations between developed and developing countries within the UN climate process. A previous pledge to provide $100 billion a year of total climate finance by 2020 was only met two years late, a failure labelled “dismal” by the UAE’s COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber and many other Global South diplomats.
Missing that goal would also raise doubts about donor governments’ commitment to meeting their new post-2025 adaptation finance goal. At COP30 last year, governments agreed to urge developed countries to triple adaptation finance – without defining the baseline – by 2035.
African and other developing countries have pointed to lack of funding as a key flaw in ongoing attempts to set indicators to measure progress on adapting to climate change.
Speaking to climate ministers from around the world in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Turkish COP31 President Murat Kurum stressed the importance of climate finance. “It is easy to say we support global climate action,” he said, “but promises must be kept.”
He said the COP31 Presidency will use the new Global Implementation Accelerator and recommendations in the Baku-to-Belem roadmap, published last year, to scale up climate finance – and will hold donors accountable for their collective finance goals.
He noted that developed countries should this year submit their first reports showing how they will deliver their “fair share” of the new broader finance goal set at COP29 in 2024, to deliver $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035. They are due to report on this once every two years.
Broader climate finance
The OECD data shows that the overall amount of climate finance – including funding for emissions cuts – provided by developed countries grew fast in 2023 before declining in 2024. In contrast, the amount of private finance developed countries say they “mobilised” increased in both 2023 and 2024, pushing the top-line figure to a record high.
While the OECD does not say which countries provided what amounts, data from the ODI Global think-tank suggests that the 2024 cuts to bilateral climate finance were spread broadly among wealthy nations.
Thwaites of NRDC welcomed the fact that overall climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries exceeded $130 billion in both 2023 and 2024. He said that this was “well above earlier projections” and “shows that when rich countries work together, they can over-achieve on climate finance goals”.
But Sehr Raheja, programme officer at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said these figures are “modest” when set against the new $300-billion goal.
“While the headline total figure of climate finance remains alright,” she said, “declining bilateral climate spending raises important questions about the predictability of high-quality, concessional public finance, which has consistently been a key demand of the Global South.”
She also lamented that loans continue to dominate public climate finance and that mobilised private finance is concentrated in middle-income countries and on emissions-reduction measures rather than adaptation projects. “Private capital continues to follow bankability rather than climate vulnerability or need,” she added.
Ritu Bharadwaj, climate finance and resilience researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said the figures painted an outdated picture as climate finance has since declined as rich countries shrink their overseas aid budgets and increase spending on defence.
Last month, the OECD published figures showing that international aid – which includes climate finance – fell by nearly a quarter in 2025. The US was responsible for three-quarters of this decline. The OECD projects a further decline in 2026.
With Thursday’s climate finance report, the OECD is “publishing a victory lap for 2023 and 2024 at almost the same moment its own aid statistics show the funding base eroding underneath it,” Bharadwaj said.
The post New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance appeared first on Climate Home News.
New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance
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