Onshore
Onshore assurance
The wind power industry faces supply chain issues and rapidly rising costs due to inflation across the board, but onshore wind has been hit the hardest. Abi Millar talks to Alessandro Mancino, head of onshore sales at Siemens Gamesa, Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at Bloomberg NEF, and Shashi Barla, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, about the challenges facing onshore wind and why wind energy companies are still optimistic about its future.
p until recently, it seemed like the trajectory for the wind industry was all one way. With the extent of the climate crisis becoming ever more apparent, and the push towards renewables gathering ground, wind was a growth industry on the cusp of global dominance. For turbine manufacturers like Vestas and Siemens Gamesa 2019 was a promising time to be in business. Unfortunately, the past two years have seen disruptions that few could have envisaged – a global pandemic and a dramatic inflation in commodity prices, capped off with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Although long-term growth projections are as robust as ever, the short-term picture looks rockier, at least when it comes to the market for new turbines. While this is affecting the whole industry, the onshore sector is struggling most, given that it was
U World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
dealing with tighter margins even before the crisis. While the big wind turbine manufacturers remain composed in the face of these challenges, they are acknowledging the issues at hand and taking steps to try and address them.
“The wind industry is experiencing a time of turbulence,” says Alessandro Mancino, head of onshore sales at Siemens Gamesa. “Much of this is clearly outside of our direct control, but we are taking measures to mitigate the impact and increase the resilience of our business.”
Siemens Gamesa has certainly had a trying couple of years. The company posted an annual net loss of €918m in the year ending September 2020, followed by a net loss of €627m in 2021. Since then, it has incurred further losses, which have been attributed in part to issues with its new 5X onshore platform.
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