Published on 22 June 2023
Overview
The European Wind Energy Competitiveness Reports are developed annually by ETIPWind (the European Technology & Innovation Platform for wind energy). This report depicts the 2022 progress towards several competitiveness indicators of the wind energy sector including wind energy installations, contribution of wind energy to the EU GDP, trade balance, jobs or R&I expenditure.
Findings
The European wind industry has an annual turnover of €69bn. Close to 60% of this adds value to the EU economy.
Wind energy added €41.8bn to EU GDP in 2022.
The wind industry generated €2.2bn of value added to the EU economy in 2022 for each GW of onshore wind installed and €2.5bn for each new GW of offshore wind .
In 2022 wind energy sustained 300,000 jobs in the EU. The number of people employed in the industry has remained stable since 2019.
The wind industry exports €9bn of goods and services.
The wind industry has decreased the investments in R&I since from an average of 5% to 3.12% in 2022. This is still in line the EU target of 2.3% of the GDP.
There were only 83 patents were logged in Europe in 2021. The number of patents on wind energy technology registered in Europe has significantly declined to historical low levels since the year 2000.
Wind energy generation avoided 138 million tons of CO2 in 2022. This would amount to €11.5bn using the average price of EU emission allowances in 2022 of €80.8/tCO2.
During the 2022 energy crisis, wind energy avoided the equivalent of 80 bcm or €71bn of fossil fuel imports to the EU, more than double than in 2021.
In 2022 the wind energy industry paid €7bn of taxes of which €1.6bn were not linked to corporate taxes and were destined mainly to local governments and communities.
Wind energy would add €104.2bn to the EU GDP by 2030 under then REPowerEU plan.
