India leaps up to fourth in the wind power stakes

The country has leapfrogged Spain and now only sits behind Germany, the US and China, in terms of installed wind power capacity.

A total of 2,623MW of wind power was added to India’s total capacity last year, lifting it in to fourth place globally. China still occupies the top spot, with the US and Germany in second and third place, respectively.

Despite India's impressive growth this is completely dwarfed by additional capacity added by China, which was 10 times this amount during the same period, reaching 30,500MW in just 12 months.

Germany did the best in Europe, which performed better than expected as a whole, adding 6GW of new capacity – a new record.

At the same time, the US continued to increase its wind power capacity at a rate of knots, installing an additional 5,000KW in the fourth quarter of 2015 alone and just over 8,500MW overall. This has been boosted further by new legislation, which looks set to ensure that wind power continues to grow.           

Several nations in South America also substantially increased their wind power capacities in 2015, with Brazil the stand out country. Meanwhile, Uruguay continued on the path to carbon-neutrality, with an additional 316MW of wind power added to the grid.

Globally, it was reported that an additional 63,013MW was installed during 2015, representing a 22% growth on 2014 numbers.