China is making waves in the offshore wind energy industry as the country's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) seeks to build more offshore wind power bases, unlocking massive demand for wind turbines, marine equipment, and high-end submarine cables in the next five years.
Yangjiang, a coastal city in western Guangdong Province, hosts China's largest offshore wind power equipment manufacturing base and a vast network of offshore wind farms. About 70 kilometers from shore and at depths of over 50 meters, eight wind turbine installation vessels were operating simultaneously to hoist giant blades of over 120 meters long for the world's largest offshore wind farm by transmission capacity.
"Our wind resources in deep-sea areas are three to four times more than inshore. We expect this sea area to generate over 50 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy annually by 2030," said Ni Changjian, an engineer of the Yangjiang offshore wind power project under China Three Gorges Corporation.
The 15th Five-Year Plan stresses advancing deep-sea offshore wind development in a regulated and orderly manner. Over the next five years, China's total installed capacity of grid-connected offshore wind power is set to exceed 100 gigawatts, doubling the amount achieved by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).
This will drive a demand of an estimated 170 billion yuan (about 25 billion U.S. dollars) for high-power wind turbines, and of around 220 billion yuan (about 32 billion U.S. dollars) for new marine engineering equipment, as well as the demand for over 5,000-kilometer high-end submarine cables in five years.
"The growing development and application of ultra-high-voltage submarine cables for deep-sea projects will accelerate breakthroughs in developing over a dozen new materials, such as those used for insulation and water-blocking, and also drive rapid growth in marine engineering services like cable laying and maintenance," said Xin Wenye, an engineer of the quality and technology department under Oriental Cable, a leading Chinese land and subsea cable solutions provider.
New opportunities extend beyond this, as the sector's transformation can be witnessed even by a gantry crane at an offshore wind power equipment manufacturing base.
Here a new giant gantry crane has been raised to over 130 meters in height, equivalent to a 40-story building, and its lifting capacity has increased to about 2,600 metric tons, specifically designed to handle the increasingly large wind turbine foundations.
Engineers say the growing size of gantry cranes reflects the industry's shift toward turbines with capacities of 20 megawatts or more.
"In the past, we built and transported wind turbines horizontally. Now, for these large-tonnage, large-dimension offshore wind turbines, we adopt vertical construction and transport. This eliminates a flipping step and improves efficiency. It's like building blocks. Right after its assembly, it is towed to the sea for installation," said Zhu Bin, an engineer of the Yangjiang offshore wind power project under China Three Gorges Corporation.
China's booming offshore wind industry unlocks huge business opportunities
