WWEA Greetings for the New Year 2025

Dear Members and Friends of WWEA, 

 

The New Year 2025 has started and already three weeks have passed. These turbulent times are bringing many changes around the world, and many of them are related to the energy sector, indirectly or directly. We look forward to our activities, which we will undertake together with you in this new year.

However, let us briefly look back to what happened in 2024 – and already in 2025: 

The year 2024 was a challenging year and although the worst turbulences on the fossil fuel market have been overcome, there is still a degree of uncertainty of how fast the world can switch to renewable energy. The current change in the US and in other countries will create additional pressure against renewables, also by spreading misinformation. We are concerned about the latest news from the US as with the new President's recent decisions, the US is in the process of voluntarily withdrawing from an industry that is a key sector of global energy supply. US consumers will pay higher prices and communities in the US and beyond will suffer from worsening environmental degradation.

However, this will not stop other nations from continuing on their path to a renewable energy economy, and the additional efforts by many governments to get rid of fossil fuel dependencies and to accelerate renewable energy deployment have started to bear fruit, resulting in new records in solar as well as wind power installations. According to WWEA’s estimates as published in the WWEA Half-year Report, a total of around 150 Gigawatt of new wind turbines were installed in the year 2024.

In 2024, we started to implement the new WWEA Strategy which aims at sharpening our profile and support the fast deployment of wind power by maximising benefits for the people. In 2024, we continued accordingly our activities in gathering and providing data, holding webinars, publishing our new WWEApodcast, working on small wind, on wind archiving and more. 

We started in 2024 the establishment of the Community Engagement Council which has now members from three continents and has started to work on community engagement standards. 

We continued our collaborative effort #Renewables4Ukraine with the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association and have been able to raise donations with an overall value of more than 300’000 € to provide humanitarian aid to hospitals and kindergartens in Ukraine. 

2024 was also a year in which important personalities have left us: former US President Jimmy Carter died, one of the most visionary politicians who initiated some of the world’s first renewable energy and wind power programmes of the world. Also former WWEA President Dr. Anil Kane, wind pioneer in his home country India, left us. 

In the times of the growing uncertainties and misinformation, wind power has a bright future when people understand its benefits and insist on using wind power - for their own needs and also to sell the power. 

Accordingly, WWEA has a strong focus on this areas also when working with the International Renewable Energy Agency IRENA. In 2024, WWEA has been able to intensify its collaboration with IRENA. WWEA contributed substantially to the White Paper on Community Energy Benefits which IRENA launched during the UN Climate Change Conference COP29 in Baku.

The new year started for WWEA with an active participation in the recent 15th IRENA Assembly in Abu Dhabi, where representatives of the 170 IRENA member states were meeting.

WWEA Vice President Monica Oliphant acted in the past two years as member of the Steering Group of the Coalition for Action and made sure that WWEA’s perspectives have been included. At the IRENA Assembly, she had the honour to present the outcomes of the main event of the Coalition for Action, the Public Private Dialogue, which focussed this year on community support for the energy transition: 

During the meetings, WWEA Secretary General Stefan Gsänger was confirmed as the co-chair of the working group Empowering People & Communities. WWEA President Dr. Irfan Mirza as well as Vice Presidents Dr. Karunamoorthy and Dr. Ibrahim Togola contributed also actively to the IRENA Assembly. 

WWEA will continue in 2025 its regular virtual events and the WWEApodcast - members and friends are encouraged to propose speakers and topics. 

Without doubt, the highlight of the year will be the WWEC2025: After WWEA decided to hold the flagship event WWEC on a biannual basis, we look very much forward to hosting the 21st World Wind Energy Conference WWEC2025 under the theme Empowering the Future with Wind Energy: Innovation, Collaboration, and Sustainable Growth from 3-5 December 2025 in the Southern Chinese city Shantou, in collaboration with our colleagues from the Chinese Wind Energy Association. Please mark your calendar – we invite you already cordially to Shantou! 

The WWEC2025 website has just been launched and provides more information: http://www.wwec2025.org.cn/index_en.html 

We thank you all for the wonderful collaboration in the past year 2024 and wish you a lot of success for your activities in 2025! 

We look forward to continuing our hard work for a renewable energy future together with you and all partners around the world also in the year 2025! 

With kind regards

Dr. Irfan Mirza
President

Stefan Gsänger
Secretary General